


A Wolf's Skin, A Hawk's Eyes, and A Lion's Heart

by Darkarashi



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Dalish Dirty Talk, Dalish Elven Culture and Customs, F/M, Heartbreak, Jealousy, Lyrium Addiction, Mutual Pining, Possessed Inquisitor, Semi-Public Sex, Spoilers, Tranquil Inquisitor, Tranquility, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Wicked Grace, Withdrawal, forced Tranquility, ritual cannibalism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-27
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2018-02-27 06:17:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 53
Words: 215,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2682230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkarashi/pseuds/Darkarashi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aurum Lavellan, First of the Clan Lavellan, Spy, Mage, and Hunter, found herself in a situation far beyond her Clan's reckoning. There was so much for her to do, and while she has no loyalty to a Circle, to the Inquisition, or the Burned Woman, she...cannot bring herself let them die. She is Apostate by every meaning of the word, she has secrets that she holds tight to, and above all else, she wants to go home.</p><p>But...Ah, but it doesn't matter. She has a world to save, a Breach to close, and so many other things to concern herself with that she does not quite have the time to bother with playing nice. She wants to go home, and no blond shemlen templar is going to distract her from that. Not at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Conclave

The gathering of Templars and Mages at the Conclave was never destined to go well. Anyone with eyes could have seen that the warring factions were not going to be so easily tamed by an aged Divine, nor were they going to come out of the contentious meetings best of friends. The Mages were not going to return to the Circle underneath the Templars that had abused them so egregiously for so long, and the Templars were not going to allow the Mages to walk freely after being so used to being in command of them.

Nothing was going to go exactly to plan.

But that was exactly why she had been sent. Dalish mage and spy, she had been chosen by her Keeper to find a way to observe the Conclave however was necessary. There was knowledge to be had, knowledge that could forever change (for the third time in living history) the course of Thedas. Kirkwall had not been too far from where her Clan had been residing when the Chantry exploded, and in the time since then, no Dalish clan had truly known peace or safety. Too many mages in the Dalish clans, even if the Dalish themselves were struggling to keep the mage blood in them burning.

She had done her best. In her defense, she _had_ done her best.

She had shaven the sides of her head closely, leaving a broad band at the top of her head unshaven. She braided the boundaries of that line, and decorated the braids with small brass baubles to better accentuate the red-blonde luster of her hair. She had worn the finest armor she could scavenge, polishing it until it gleamed, choosing to wear brown and green cloth over the parts of the armor that were dented or malformed. Her vallaslin she did nothing to obscure, leaving the intricate marks that showed her as a follower of one of the old paths open to the world. Her eyes were left alone, untouched by makeup. The pale violet ringed in bright, bright blue had always been enough just on its own.

Aurum had not meant to be where she was when _it_ happened. She knew only that she had heard something amiss, had gone to investigate and then been blasted into the Fade for her troubles. And then ripped out of it.

There had also definitely been spiders involved. She _distinctly_ remembered spiders.

But now, she was a captive, hurting and dazed still, at the hands of shemlen torturers, surrounded by armed and armored warriors with no way to try and escape.

Her hands were bound in front of her, and men with wicked looking weapons were lording over her, surrounding her. Magic was clearly not an option. These men felt like Templars to her mage-sense, and she had no desire to try and test her mettle against them, especially not with her head still spinning. It would be a short battle, and she was hopelessly outnumbered.

On top of all of that, her hand _hurt_. Moreso than she could ever remember hurting before. Becoming First of Lavellan had not hurt so badly, being made into what she was meant to be had not hurt as bad, obtaining her vallaslin, taking her own tattoos, taking her _skins_ , _Mythal’enaste_ not even that time she had taken an arrow to the gut had hurt as bad as her hand did **right now**.

Shaking her head to try and clear the haze that dogged her, Aurum looked back up to the two people interrogating her, trying to get her mind to focus long enough to form an answer to their nonstop questions about where she had been, what she had done, who she had seen, how did she kill the Divine?

“I don’t know _anything_. I was at the Conclave, and then…nothing. I did not see anything, I don’t know what is happening, my hand hurts like hell and I can’t _think_ with the two of you screaming me down every time I try and speak!” she snapped at them as soon as she had a moment where she could interject.

The dark haired woman looked at her with shock, and for a moment, Aurum was inordinately pleased with that. Her left hand flashed bright green and the _pain_ came back, chasing away any sense of victory. She tried to bite down on the scream, not wanting to give the shemlen the pleasure of hearing her in pain. But her back still seized and her head dropped back and she still grit her teeth. Because it still hurt.

“Get up. Come with us,” the Orlesian one purred, gesturing to the other woman to help Aurum to her feet.

Aurum wanted to disagree, wanted to fight back against whatever they wanted her for, but the black haired woman grabbed her by the elbow and yanked her to her feet. Aurum scrambled to get her legs beneath her, and was unceremoniously dragged out of the room to continue this travesty of a day.

* * *

The first rift she closed sent pain driving into her fucking _bones_ and she fell to her knees, clutching at her wrist. The elf who had grabbed her hand and thrown it at the tear in the Veil congratulated her for a job well done, and Aurum just stared at him, not at all able to formulate a response. She steeled herself against falling as soon as she got her feet back underneath her and did her best to look attentive as the other elf began lecturing her on what was happening and why.

Solas introduced himself, eventually, as did Varric, each in their own style.

Varric was chuckling at the Seeker's foul mood. He made jokes and introduced his crossbow to her, which…made her heart lift just the smallest bit. The pain faded away with the smile that danced at the corners of her lips. Aurum decided she liked the dwarf. She liked him a _lot_. He earned her first true smile since the Conclave, a toothy thing that made her blue-purple eyes sparkle.

Together, the new trio forged on, battling through demons and the sky falling down around them. Aurum kept much and many of her thoughts to herself, watching the hole in the sky very carefully, and _listening_ to it just as cautiously. It sang, as all things of the Fade did to her, and she knew that knowing what it was singing of would be of vital importance in the coming hours.

Her borrowed staff was awkward in her hands, too thick and long for her taste. But this was a typical staff for the shemlen, and she did not want to stick out that hard. The shemlen did not deserve to know what she was entirey capable of, and as they fought, Aurum grew more confident with this new style of staff, mimicking Solas’s movements until she could find the rhthym of her own steps once again.

Part of her still ached for her old staff though, but as they grew ever closer to the Temple where the Conclave had been set up, it became more and more obvious that she was probably never going to see that particular staff ever again. Deshanna was going to be upset.

A man wearing a lion-faced helm barely gave her a second look when they drew close to him and his men, even as Cassandra explained what was going on. He invoked his God to protect them and Aurum had to quickly avert her head to keep either of the shems from seeing the way her lips curled at the idea. She had the mark of _her_ Gods upon her skin, she did not need their Burned Woman to help her. The very idea was insulting, but she was not going to bring it up right then. She did not need them trying to hold her for blasphemy as well as being an apostate mage.

* * *

Oh, Creators protect and save her. They wanted her to close the tear in the sky. She had all of two rifts closed and they were throwing her to the largest fucking one and expecting it to work. There was red lyrium _everywhere_ , and as soon as Solas had told her what they were doing, as soon as Varric explained what red lyrium even was, Aurum had stepped forward. She swallowed her biting comment about what she thought they could do with their great ideas and lifted her hand to open the half-sealed rift, at Solas’s guidance.

Things went rapidly to shit, with a huge pride demon stepping out of the rift. Everyone battled ferociously, she tried to disrupt the rift to throw the demons away from the other fighters, and at the end of the fighting, she reached forward to close the big rift –

* * *

“Oh! Oh Maker, you’re awake!?”

The child’s voice did nothing to assuage her headache. She mumbled some niceties at the small one, massaged her temples, trying to get the pain to stop. This day was. Just. Great. Already.

The child scampered away, slamming the door behind him after teling her multiple times that she was needed. Immediately.

Aurum was left blessedly alone. She did not know where she was, she did not know what was happening, or how she got into the clothing she was wearing, and this was entirely out of her comfort zone. Someone had dressed her, bandaged her wounds and moved her from the last place she had remembered being. She needed to get back to her Clan. Her mission was over, the rift was closed-ish and she needed to go home.

She fixed her hair quickly, and put the ornate armor she found in the chest in her room on. If this was going to be a trial, she’d run with the armor on, both for the protection, and to have something to sell so that she could bring _something_ back to her clan. Gold was as good as secrets. You could use gold to get food. Secrets, not so much. If she could steal a mount, even better. Her Hart had gone missing, and the clever beast was undoubtedly somewhere nearby. She just needed to ride out far enough away from these shems to call it back to her.

Her hopes for an easy escape were dashed as soon as she exited the door. People were crowding the streets of the small town, lauding the Herald of Andraste, calling her hero and savior, thanking her for what she had done, urging her towards the Chantry to meet with the War Council. Aurum grit her teeth and walked, clutching her staff desperately to her side. With her head down, she stormed towards the Chantry, unwilling to stop to talk with anyone just yet. Varric lifted a hand in greeting as she rushed past, and while she was happy to see him, she did not want to stay here overlong. Her hand was still glowing, and there was _still_ a hole in the sky still and all Aurum wanted to do was to go _home_.

That was not an option, apparently.

“ _This_ is the Herald? The elf? The _mage?_ ”

This whispers that were not quite whispers, reached her and she was careful to keep from snarling. How dare they judge her with the same breath they extolled her? She had done everything she could to save them all, for the good of no one else but her Clan. They hissed their curses behind her back, and Aurum kept her head high. She had dealt with this sort of bullshit before. She would undoubtedly deal with it again.

Her ears, long and pointed, pinned back flat against the sides of her skull. Amongst elves, that would be noticed as a sign of rage, but amongst shems, it passed for nothing. They could not read her body language, they did not care to understand why she would not stand for their slurs, but she had to endure this. Then she would run.

The meeting with the advisers, her first real time to talk with them was…less fruitful than she would have hoped.

“Templars could suppress the Breach, weaken it so-”

“We should not go to the Templars for help, Commander. More importantly, I will never go to the Templars for help. The mages will be of more assistance.”

Aurum’s voice cut like an obsidian dagger, and she snapped her gaze sharply to the man. Her eyes locked with his own and she held his gaze evenly. Her temper was already tested, and it was starting to fray.

“ _I_ was a Templar. I know what they’re capable of,” the blond Commander asserted, looking up at her with a stern set to his jaw.

This time, her teeth did show, a barest peeking of canines slightly too long to be wholly normal sliding into view as her lips pulled back. Her vallaslin crinkled with the movement, the pale red marks giving her face a ferocious look. She had not chosen the difficult path of Andruil for fun. She was a Hunter and the First. She was more than just an elf who was in the wrong place at the right time. She was more than an apostate, more than just the little knife-ear whelp who did not know what was happening.

“And you do not know if they are actually capable of what you say they are. It is supposition. The Fade is the working of mages, and we should go to the mages if we approach anyone about helping us.”

The Commander stared at her, and for a moment, looked unnerved. Angry, yes, but unnerved.

“It does not matter who we choose to support. Neither side will speak with us yet. The Chantry has denounced the Inquisition…and you, specifically,” the Antivan…Josephine said.

Aurum’s sneer was tempered down into a more neutral expression as she looked to Josephine. Josephine, who had learned something of Dalish to greet her, was by far, her favorite person in the room right then.

“Because I’m a knife-eared mage? Or because they think I am still guilty of the Divine’s murder?” Aurum said, softly, the anger in her voice gone all at once.

Josephine was not so crass as to wince at her words, but nodded.

“Some are calling you the Herald of Andraste, which-”

“Is a blasphemy unto your Gods of the highest order, of course,” Aurum sighed, reaching up to rub her brows in exasperation. “And, as it is blasphemy, they will not help. Of course.”

“How do you feel about that?” the Commander asked, with his arms crossed.

Aurum took a moment to regard him again, her gaze cold before she turned away from him.

“I am Dalish. Your God and Burned Woman are not my concern. What is the next step? How do we at least convince the Chantry that I am not here to be the messenger of your Gods so that I may go home?” Aurum did not deign to look at the Commander as she spoke, fixing her gaze first on Josephine, and then turning to Leliana.

“Unfortunately, you cannot leave yet. There are people who would seek to harm you, and the Inquisition is only able to protect you if you remain here.”

Aurum’s mouth twitched, as did the very tips of her ears, but she nodded. That made sense to her, but it meant that she was not going to be able to return to her Clan with the haste she wanted. Without knowing how _much_ about her the general population knew, or how much they could find out, she could not leave this place without putting her entire Clan in danger. If things were truly as bad as it seemed they were, returning to her Clan would be the same as signing their deaths into reality.

“You make a fair point, my Lady Leliana. What, then, do we do?”

“Mother Giselle has asked to speak with you. She is tending to the wounded in a valley not too far from here. Going there and gaining her trust could be a vital first step in our mission. Earning the trust of a Revered Mother of her standing would be a good start in healing the rift between us and the Chantry.”

Aurum nodded, and was silent. There was nothing much else to say, really. Apparently, now she had to tend to these people's problems, as vast and multitudinous as they were.

She had to speak with this reverend mother, talk with that person, make nice with this farmer for his horses, gather this to help strengthen the Inquisition, close the Fade Rifts here, close the Fade Rifts there, make decisions, or at least, _listen_ while the others made decisions and her own opinions were summarily ignored, and all the while bear the mantle of "Herald of Andraste" as if that meant anything to her.

* * *

Before she left for every mission, she took the time to talk with Solas and Varric, enjoying their company immensely. Solas was an elf, and while he made disparaging comments about him being a flat-ear to gauge her reaction, Aururm was quick to assure him that she did not particularly care about that. He seemed to have only been in contact with the more odious Clans, and was rather unkind in his words about her people in their first few conversations, until Aurum demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that she and her Clan both were, definitively, not of that mindset.

Granted, Solas should have never expected to be welcomed into a Clan with open arms after walking up on their aravels without any announcement or reasoning, but if one was not raised with the Dalish, such things were often hard to know.

She was just happy to have someone else who understood what it was to be an elf around shemlen. It was a small comfort, but even the smallest comforts were worth having in this time.

Varric was just amusing to her, and she enjoyed being around him. He spun mad stories, and when he made mention of his books, Aurum questioned him at length about them. Books had always been something she had adored – the Dalish did not have much in the way of resources that could be turned into written books, but she enjoyed reading them whenever she could find one worth her time.

Their small group grew slowly, with first, the addition of The Iron Bull and his Chargers, and then another elf-who-would-rather-not-be named Sera. Aurum did her best with both of them, trying to find what made them tick (as The Iron Bull did the same to her) so that they would trust her and follow her lead, as she was made to lead more and more often for reasons she was unable to discern.

Leliana was…prickly towards her, but Aurum understood that. She had just lost the Divine, and while Aurum did not appreciate the God Leliana worshipped, Aurum understood the devotion. The Divine had been a woman, a friend, to Leliana, and Aurum was careful to offer condolences when she could. Aurum had survived and Justinia had not. That must rankle, and after Aurum made nice with small conversation, she would leave. There was not much else she could do.

Josephine was an absolute delight. She was Antivan, and Aurum had always gotten along swimmingly with the Antivans she had encountered before this. It seemed Josephine was no exception to that experience. Josephine made polite conversation with her about her being Dalish, and asked a few questions about her culture, which Aurum enjoyed immensely. She was the First of her Clan, heiress to the leadership and all that that entailed, and even if Josephine was _human_ , it was still nice to talk about home, since she would not be seeing it for a while. There were cultural differences to explore, and Josephine made no small mention of how amazing it was to finally have someone to talk with about how best to handle some of the Dalish clans.

Cassandra was hot and cold. She was polite and firm, and could be very aware of her own short-snapping commentary, but still was utterly devoted to the Chantry and, after all that had happened was still unsure if Aurum was innocent or not. Aurum allowed her doubt, because she understood where it came from. Cassandra apologized for how she had acted towards Aurum in the beginning, which did quite a lot to assure Aurum that Cassandra had only ever acted out what she thought was the best course of action.

The Commander Cullen swore he was no longer a Templar, but to Aurum, that meant nothing. She had tried to bite her tongue through their conversation. He spoke of mages as if they were a plague, and then quickly backtracked when he saw the look on her face, apologizing but still urging caution because of the demons he saw dancing behind every mage. He acted, talked and walked like a Templar, but she was not of close enough rapport with him to challenge him and his ideas truly.

Still. It was fun to make him stammer. She was an apostate elf, and he was a Templar and when she made coquettish advances on him, he would stumble over his words. It thrilled her. She would slide something so innocuous into their conversation, something soft and “interested” and he would fumble over his words, stepping away and wringing his hands or rubbing the back of his neck as he begged for the conversation to be changed to something - _anything_ else. Aurum would smirk, he would recover, and she would leave.

She never once asked him about him being a Templar. Their conversations were usually only brief enough for her to make a half-attempted flirtation, or for him to offer her some polite greeting and then she was gone. She would send him out on tasks, as was needed, and her own adventuring took her far and wide as she tried to mend rifts and relationships as best she could. He was hardly a thought until she entered Haven, and then she only talked for him for as long as it took to make him flush red.

It was a game, and one of the few things that brought her real joy. She would snap at him about mages, watching him flush with anger as he brought about his Templar experience, only for her to cut him off and leave abruptly. Riling him up was fucking _fun_ and he never failed to disappoint. A comment there, an insult here, and he was a raging mess, or a stammering one.

Aurum didn’t think too hard on how making his heart race set hers to thundering as well. It was _fun_. And that was all she minded in the moment. Soon enough she was seeking him out intentionally, trying to rouse his ire, his blush, anything because it was just _fun_ to watch him stumble over himself as the **Herald** got in his face. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, so if you're reading this around October 2015, welcome to the edited and remastered version of A Wolf's Skin! Not much has changed if you are a reader from the before times, except some sentences - there are a few new things in here now, but nothing game changing enough to keep you from going right on ahead to A Hawk's Eyes! 
> 
> <3, Darkarashi


	2. The Journey to Redcliffe

“You _cannot_ go to the Mages! The Templars are more suited-”

“The Templars are not an option, Commander. I will go to Redcliffe to treat with the Mages there and bring them over. Solas believes that the extra magic they can offer us will bring us better luck in closing the Breach. I believe him.”

“We do not know what the Breach is even made of. Throwing magic at it could cause a cataclysmic event. The Templars can weaken the Breach, make it _easier_ to work with. I don't see how the Rebel Mages could be of assistance -"

“Mind. Your. Tongue,” Aurum snapped, looking up to the Commander with rage in her eyes. “I don’t care how you feel about mages. All Mages are apostates, and the Templars abandoned their duties, and you abandoned the Templars. Both sides are wrong, but I will be seeking the support of the Mages in this. For too long they were slaves and prisoners. This is the end of that. _That_ is the end of _this_. You and your men should go to the Hinterlands and search for iron there. You complain about there not being enough material for swords, so why don’t you go find some.”

She could feel the shock in the room, but Aurum did not flinch. This was passing close to the first time she had truly raised her voice at the War Table and it had caught them all off-guard, She held the Commander’s gaze evenly, waiting for him to challenge her decision. She was not the leader of the Inquisition, that title was owned by either Cassandra or Leliana, in truth.

But those two all too often listened to her, and it was therefore easy to win Josephine over. The Commander was the only holdout more often than not, constantly complaining about needing more men, more supplies, more everything, and then scowling whenever she sent him out to go get exactly what he had wanted. She was tired of it, and tired of having to allow a shemlen Templar speak over her with no regard for who she was and what her position was. She may be far from her Clan, but she was the _First_ and only the Keeper of her  _own_ Clan could ever speak over her. Not him. Not Cullen. 

“ _Herald,_ ” he snarled, standing straight and leaning away from the War Table.

“Dareth shiral, Commander. Hunt well.”

He knew the dismissal in her words, and yet, he did not leave right away, trying to swallow down his rage long enough to make a comeback, but Aurum was already talking to the other Councilmembers about what to do to obtain the Rebel Mage’s assistance.

If the door slammed over-loud behind him, he did not care.

Aurum’s mouth ticked into a smile, and she turned back to the work of the women, pleased that their esteemed Commander was no longer here. Now they could actually work without being interrupted every few moments by someone prattling on about the Templars. Everyone else was in agreement, save for the Commander, and his constant interruptions made it hard for Aurum to actually discuss what she had wanted to talk about.

“Now, about those bandits in the Hinterlands…I am thinking, if I start at our Dwarfson camp, I can sweep out the bastards between there and Redcliffe, which should lighten the load on our troops over _here_ , giving the other missions in the area a chance to succeed with less chance of being interfered with, and hopefully less casualties.”

The others assembled nodded.

“We are in agreement, then?”

“Of course, Herald.”

* * *

The fighting to clear the bandits out was bloody. One of the fuckers had managed to duck under Aurum's guard (something had broken her concentration on the song for the barest of moments) and scored a deep gash alongside her ribs. Bull had given her guff for the wound, laughing about how the mages were so easily taken down, but his good-natured ribbing faded when she had started to limp, and her blood had started to flow down the side of her armor. Aurum did not want to admit to how deep the wound went, but she could feel a weird rattling in her lungs that she knew meant something _bad_ had happened.

She had not even managed to make it to Redcliffe yet, and was staggering unsteadily along behind Bull and Varric. Solas was helping her along, supporting her with an arm and his staff. There were no more potions, and they were scrambling to get to the next safe spot where they could rest and refill and she could get someone to bandage her wounds.

“Just a bit further now, Herald.”

“Shove it, Solas. You’ve been saying that “just a bit” for a while already.”

“I know. But it is...just a bit further. We’re almost to the camp. Just hold on.”

“I can carry her. We’d make better time,” Bull offered, stepping closer to Aurum and nearly knocking her over. 

“N-No! We need you to be there to smash heads. I can walk, Bull. I can walk, its fine,” she insisted, waving his concern off. It hurt too much to turn to look at him, but she trusted he got the idea that she was _fine_ and didn't need to be carried.

Aurum’s overtaxed body had other plans. Her leg went out from underneath her, and Solas dropped his staff to support her. She clutched his arm and tried to hold herself steady, but that just made her gored side hurt all the more. Aurum pressed her hand to her side and when it came away soaked with blood, she sighed. Her hands had gone cold, too.

“Shit that is a lot of blood, innit?” she slurred. Everything was swimming around her. The world twisted and spun and she felt someone hold her close. Someone _really_ warm. His skin... _burned_ with fire. Hot like a dragon, but familiar enough that she relaxed regardless. Not that her body wouldn't have gone limp regardless, but there was at least some part of her that chose to unwind even the slightest bit. 

Vaguely, she saw horns and mumbled “S’fuckin’ hot when you hold me.”

She meant, of course, that the Qunari was very warm, and her chilled body was hypersensitive to the heat, but that did not stop the words being playfully misconstrued.

Bull chuckled, and Varric laughed. Solas, in the background, rolled his eyes.

“Well that’s one way to go about romancing someone,” the dwarf offered drily.

“Go ffffff- _uck_ yourself, Varric,” Aurum growled as best she could when her life’s blood was seeping out of her.

Bull’s grip on her was not uncomfortably tight, and did not press his arm or hand against her wound, which was a small, but much beloved grace. Aurum tried not to black out, she really did. She wanted to stay conscious. These were her battle-brothers, she needed to stay awake to guide them, or at the very least fight beside them. This was not as bad as that arrow from all those years ago - she could still fight. She could fight. She _would_ fight, regardless. She would always fight. She could find her feet and staff and pull her magic around her. The Fade's song around her was only growing louder and louder and louder still, and she could hear the hiss of words from Spirits and Demons alike calling to her. Shaking her head would do nothing to dispel them, she knew that. But she also knew herself. She would not be taken by a spirit - or a demon. Not while she still drew breath on her own. 

“If we get to Redcliffe, we should be able to find a healer capab-”

“ _Craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaap,_ ” Bull groaned, interrupting Solas's thoughts.

Aurum felt the telltale sting in her hand from a nearby Rift opening, and weakly struggled out of his grasp. Bull held onto her for a good long moment, until her uncommonly pointy elbow caught him squarely in the nose. His grip loosened just enough for her to twist and _drop_ down. She could fight. Bull needed both of his hands for his weapon. They could do this.

She miscalculated her body's tilt, and hit the ground **hard** , the movement waking her up in the most sickening way possible. Pain was a distant, foggy reality, but what she could feel was how she had landed _just_ wrong enough to fracture one of the bones in her right hand. 

“Herald! Stay back, we can handle the demons, come in when the Rift is ready to be closed!”

“ _No,_ ” she snarled.

She snatched her staff away from Solas, found her balance, and then dove into the brawl, charging ahead at the forefront of them all, without a single care for the blood draining from her side at a truly alarming rate. She was Aurum, First of Clan Lavellan, and this was not the day she was going to die. She still had work to do.

A war song started at the back of her throat and she flung her magic around her. There was nothing but the song of battle in her blood, the dance of the hunt in her steps and it was easy to fall into the rhythm and forget everything else. It was as it had ever been for her - wreathed in the Fade, listening, singing, dancing to the beat of the Veil's secrets as she fought. Magic scorched the air, and when it was done, when she felt that the Rift needed to be closed, when she reached forward to close it, the whiplash nearly stripped consciousness from her.

Thedas crashed into existence around her, and she collapsed into the grass, not caring that it smelled of Rage Demon and blood. Huh. Blood. Smelled a _lot_ like blood. There was a dull roaring somewhere behind her, the rasp of steel being drawn, and Aurum struggled to push herself up to her hands and knees. Her left arm did not work like it should, and she had to struggle to push herself back onto her knees. Blinking blood and…demon gross shit out of her eyes she tried to see what was happening. Absently, she clutched at her tingling left arm with a broken right hand, not quite processing the pain as fast as she should otherwise. 

Someone was yelling? Bull was standing in front of her, his huge maul still in his hands.

She liked Bull. Bull was good people. If he was an elf, he’d…he probably would not be as _much_ as he was. He was a wall, an indomitable force, a damn good guy to have the back of, because that meant he had your back too. He was a spy, and unashamed of that. That was nice. Varric and Solas were there too, good men both of them. The Commander? Was there? Too. He  was there. Bright and scarlet, glowing with the light that struck him. His aura's song was a brilliant crimson streaked with shining gold and it coiled around him tightly. When he turned his gaze toward her, Bull blocked him, a solid massive wall of Qunari heavy-hitter.

Aurum smiled. She tasted blood in her mouth. Why was she smiling? Where had all the blood come from?

“Herald, what were you _thinking?!_ ”

Those words made sense. Odd. She turned her head to the Commander, who was shouting Bull down, and Bull was giving it right back, his grip too-tight on the weapon in his hands. Solas was nowhere to be seen, and Varric was standing in the Commander’s blind spot, an uneasy hand on Bianca. 

The Commander did not stop talking, yelling, gesticulating. Varric stepped in, interjecting with Bull, defending her right to do what she thought was right. The argument grew in volume, washing over her. Hidden in the voices were songs - more than she could stand to hear all at once. She was so close to edging into the Fade, so close to the Veil itself and the Shade beyond that anything emotive was enough to send fractures of songs she had never heard through her mind.

There were so many colors, so many auras and spirits and everything around. It was just too much. She keened, pressing her hands to her ears and screwing her eyes shut. The pain was…Why was everyone here, what was going on, how was this happening?

She felt a hand press something to her wounded side, and ice flushed through her veins. Darkness took her gently down into its depths.

* * *

“Commander, you cannot enter – she is still _resting_!”

Aurum stirred, trying to pull herself out of unconsciousness. She was just barely aware of anything, but she felt like she should really be awake. Pain wracked her ferociously when she tried to sit up, and with a gasp, she reached for where the pain came from. One of her hands was wrapped in heavy bandages, holding it still and steady while the bone set. She could feel the stitches pulling in her side. No magic hummed around the wound. That was odd. That should have been…the first thing done.

The Commander burst into the tent, ignoring the loud complaints of Solas. He barked an order to his men, something she could not catch, and Aurum tried to sit up, propping herself up on one elbow.

“ _You_ ,” the Commander snapped, pointing an accusatory finger at Aurum.

“Commander,” Aurum grit out. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“My patrol happened to come by the Rift **right** as you were endangering _everything_ with your - had we not been there? You could have _died_ , Herald.”

“I survived the explosion at the Conclave, and the death of everyone else there. I think a little love-tap with the ass-end of a blade isn't enough to take down the glorious 'Herald of Andraste' or whatever they're all calling me this week.”

“I cannot beli-”

“Commander. Please. Shut up. Get the healermage in here, since I’m _certain_ you don’t want me to heal myself. Who knows, I might fuck it up and summon a demon, since I've never been in a Circle. Or is it bloodmagic to heal oneself? My teaching never covered that.”

The look the blond man gave her could have curdled milk and he huffed at her. Aurum smirked at him, swinging her legs off the cot and standing on shaking legs. She felt like a newborn halla, her knees knocking together unsteadily as she tried to find the strength to move. She reached for her staff to lean on, looking up to the Commander. There was a fresh cut across his brow, leaving blood streaking across his cheek and chin.

Even if she was certain that she looked far worse, she was the First of her Clan, and her hand was lit with gentle, cooling green light before she could really consider her actions. This was merely what she did. She was the First of her Clan, and this is what the First did if the Keeper was not around. He should be healed. Before her, of course. That was how it went. 

There were things trained into her that she could not ever deny. She was First, and he ranked beneath her as a shemlen mundane. She should heal him. Despite everything else, she should heal him.

When she reached for his face with her magic-wreathed hand, the Commander ducked backwards, a half-there curse on his lips. His eyes were narrowed in fear and anger, and he did not need to say anything in that moment to stoke her ire. Pain thundered angry drumbeats through her mind, and Aurum was quick to find her own anger once again. Her ears pinned back against her skull, Aurum took a challenging step forward.

“Commander. Let me heal the wound. It’s unbecoming. The healer should have seen to it.”

“I would rather you not, Herald.”

Aurum’s eyes narrowed. Faster than someone with a near-mortal injury should move, she whipped her staff around, hooking it behind his legs and pulling them out from beneath him. She pounced, pinning him beneath her, her broken hand latching around his throat and her magic-touched hand flashed briefly over his wound.

It was healed within the second, and the warmth that followed the healing, flowing through his veins, making him…drowsy…and _relaxed_ took almost all of the fight out of the Commander. She had a hand on his throat, he should have reached for his knife and done something about it, but he did not. Her hand was on his throat and her magic was lulling him into feeling that that was acceptable. The thought of taking his knife out and threatening her as she had just done to him did not even occur to him as more than a passing thought. 

“You don’t…I did not give you **permission** , Herald,” he snapped at her, finding anger before anything else.

“I humbly, then, ask your forgiveness, _Knight-Commander_ ,” Aurum hissed, standing on her own, looming over him, her magic crackling around her fingers. “Do I have your leave to heal _myself_ , Ser Templar?”

He wanted to be mad at her. He wanted to scream and rage at her and tell her every fucking thing she had just done wrong, scream about how he _was not a Templar any longer_ , but her skin was a shade paler than he was used to, and he could see blood seeping through the bandages that had been wrapped around the wound, staining her smallclothes with fresh, bright, red. She was still brutally injured and teetering on a very unsafe precipice. She was bleeding and pale but there was still _fire_ in his chest and hers. He wanted to fight back.

But…but the languor from the healing spell of the Apostate Mage who stood over him with her magic already at her hand, a mage who had managed to surprise him with an attack that was equal parts brutal and efficient kept him from doing so. He felt so s _oft_ inside. Soft and gooey and squishy and...

“Ugh, fucking _shemlen_. Get your men ready. There are bandits coming. Big group, it sounds like.”

He watched the way her ears moved, ticking left and right, and twitching up and down as she listened to the world around them. It was entrancing, the way the long lobes moved. He stared, open-mouthed as her eyes darted from side to side and her head tilted. It had to be the magic that made every movement she made so fascinating to him.

 _Maker protect me from the mages_ , he thought, wanting nothing more than to sit up and continue the argument, but the want was never translated into movement. He was on the ground and staring up at her.

She pressed a hand to her side, and there was a brief flash of healer’s-green again. The wound could not be healed with that little bit of magic, he knew. He had a sense of exactly how much magic she had used and it was only the slightest bit more than what she had used on his face. She just stopped the bleeding, if anything else. Why would she not go further?

He watched as she stooped to her armor and pulled it on, the gaping hole from the sword that had nearly killed her not yet repaired. She adjusted her cowl over her hair, sneered at the hole in her armor and bent with a pained hiss to get her staff from where it had dropped when she tackled him. 

“Get _up_ Commander. You have men to lead, and I have mages to go acquaint myself with. Do your job and I will do mine, and when I get back to Haven, we can have a talk about what you think is appropriate for mages to do while I get drunk and don't listen.”

The Commander of the Inquisition shook his head and stood, gaping at her as she brushed past him, out of the tent and into the small camp he and his men had set up.

“Bull, Varric, Solas! We’re heading to Redcliffe now. Grab your gear, we need to get moving before the bandits get here. They’re the _Commander’s_ problem now. Everyone else, look alive! You’ve got fighting inbound and I’d hate for you all to be caught with your smalls ‘round your ankles.”

Commander Cullen stared at her back as she led her small team away, not sure if he was angry or amazed. He settled for angry when he realized that one of them had stolen a good number of the healing potions from the supply cache his men had carried all the way out here.

“Maker give me strength to deal with _that_ mage,” he growled, as an amendment to his previous prayer, running his hands through his hair before barking at his men to stand ready.


	3. The Consequence

The Commander was still hot under the collar when he heard the horns of the scouts sounding the return of the Herald. He had had time enough to grow angry at how callously she had treated him, how she had used magic against him without his permission, even if it was just to heal him. She had done so many things _wrong_ and whenever he tried to bring it up to Josephine, Leliana or Cassandra, they looked at him as if he had another head growing out of his neck. The Herald needed to be reigned in. She was a mage and she was Apostate, more so than any Circle mage who had elected to leave the Circles. She had never been trained properly and it showed in all of the most frustrating of ways.

And now he had a good reason to talk with her about it all. She had, after all, invited him to do so.

He left the recruits in their training, turning to the trail that he knew she would have to be coming down. Solas had returned a few days prior, saying that the Herald had found another mage to serve the Inquisition and that he thought it would be better if he returned here to continue researching the Breach in her absence. Cullen could not see fault in his reasoning, but the fact that there was _another_ mage coming to join the Inquisition's Inner Circle made his teeth grind. She was bringing the rebel mages with her, Maker preserve him, and now he was expected to oversee everything that these new mages could get up to, along with the mage that the Herald would now have constantly at her side, just as she did with Solas. It never stopped, did it?

He saw the horns of her great Red Hart break over the line of the hill, and atop it, sat the Herald of Andraste, her mage’s staff resting easily in the stirrup-pocket. She swayed delicately in the saddle, looking far more comfortable atop the back of the great beast than he had seen her in all of his other time. Behind her, riding on his own mount was a Tevinter mage with a curled mustache and an air of _trouble_ around him. The Iron Bull was walking, and Varric was astride a fine-looking mountain pony. Behind them was a veritable army of mages, marching as well as any army full of those not used to walking could.

Preparing himself for a shouting match, and mentally rehearsing every point he had come up with in his time away from her, he stepped into the path in front of her, but she just moved her hart out of his way, and walked on. She passed by close enough for him to touch or reach out for her, but when she looked down at him and he was struck by the deep circles under her eyes, the still-present paleness of her skin, and the way her gaze did not focus all the way on him. This was not the time. He knew that look. He knew that stare. He had seen it in the mirror before.

He swallowed the hard lump in his throat and turned his attention to the mages that were coming. As much as he did not want to have all of these mages here, as much as he would have felt far more comfortable with the Templar aide they could have had instead, the mages were here, and it was time for him to be the Commander they needed. Haven was now host to mages, for better or worse. The decision had been made, and now he must abide by it.

He would talk with the Herald later.

* * *

Aurum was quick to make herself scarce before the Commander could come to the War Table, dispatching Josephine and Leliana to gather the last few pieces of information they needed in order to have the resources to close the Breach once and for all.

The Breach must be closed. What she had seen could not come to pass. It would not come too pass. She would stop what she had seen, she would halt the horrors before they even came to pass. She gave no commands for them to pass on to the Commander, leaving them to debate amongst themselves for what he could do in the interim.

She felt sick as she walked through the Chantry, not pausing long enough to make small talk with anyone, giving the few pieces of research materials she had collected a quick toss towards the elf in charge of the research with a mumbled “Abelas, abelas,” before she was gone again. She could not be in the Chantry, she couldn’t stand and listen to Mother Giselle, she couldn’t talk with Leliana ( _oh, Leliana, sweet, defiant Leliana, I have seen you with arrows in your neck and nothing but rage in your eyes_) could not look at any of her other companions, could not **be** with them because her mind was – was – was –

“Easy! Easy there, dear. Come along, we’ll get you set up with something warm, your hands are trembling, my dear.”

Dorian Pavus. He had stood with her in that place, making light of the situation. He had rankled her in the moment, but his brevity in her memories helped them not be overwhelming. While they were _there_ , she felt as if at any moment she could snap and punch him in his stupid nose for complaining about his coat or the blood, or the tacky decor, but now...If anything got too much, he’d come back to her memory, making some off-color joke, making light, making fun, commenting dryly on something that certainly did not matter in the slightest, and it made everything hurt less.

“Tevinter, ma serannas, please. My cabin is this way.”

Her voice was cracking, strained, and Dorian’s gaze turned soft, his sigh gentle.

“Come then, love. Almost there.”

He was kind enough to keep his voice low, so that the others would not overhear, and she gestured to demonstrate where her cabin was. She was careful to keep her back straight, her posture perfect, everything outwardly projected so as to be “fine”. If one ignored the dark circles under her eyes, darkening ever more each hour that passed, if one ignored the way she still favored her left side, or how she kept flinching at the oddest of noises that should not have roused anything out of her, Aurum looked to be the Herald anyone expected to see.

Varric was quick to deflect the attention of some of the more zealous worshippers, stepping in behind Dorian and Aurum to distract. Aurum was thankful, again, for Varric. She lifted a hand in greeting, in thanks, as she passed by.

When door to her cabin finally clicked shut, and the shutters were pulled tight, blocking outside view, Aurum let go of her facade, relieved to finally have the opportunity to relax. Dorian lit the candles with a flick of his wrist, and Aurum was thankful for that. She had not tried any magic since…since Alexius. The idea of it made her nauseous.

Aurum locked the door, then double-checked the lock before kicking her chair up against it.

As soon as it was done, Dorian was there immediately, holding her close to his chest and shushing her gently. Aurum had not even noticed that she was shaking until he tried to soothe her.

She did not cry or wail. Clan-Firsts did not do that. They did _not_. She had gone through her vallaslin without a single flinch. She had gotten all of her tattoos without once whimpering or crying out or even _entertaining the idea_ of doing that. Pain was what life was. Pain was life, life was pain and – and – and –

“Hush, Dalish. There, now, sit down. I’ll make tea. You’re safe here. Do you want me to set wards?”

Aurum nodded fiercely, pulling her knees up to her chest and resting her heels on the chair as well. Her knees cradled her forehead as she clutched at herself to try and get the roaring in her skin under control.

She rocked slightly, the movement soothing, even if it did look ridiculous. Dorian had walked through time and horror with her, and when he started rubbing her back and urging her to take the earthenware mug and drink, she could not be more thankful he was actually a good person. His magic alighted upon the walls, blanketing them in a comfortable half-muffled silence. Safety behind the walls that were warded. No one would get in without a fight. Good, very good.

“Time magic can be hard on people, I hear.”

Aurum huffed.

“You seem to be handling it well,” she said bitterly

“Dalish, now, that’s not fair. You know those people. You saw them hurt and…and _worse_. Be kind to yourself. I only know them as shades of themselves. I could not be as affected as you. These are not my people, they are yours.”

“They’re people. People hurt. Life is pain, that is all there is to anything we do. But I am not disturbed by their doomed timeline’s selves. Those people have now, never existed. It is not for them that I am worried. I am worried for me.”

The Tevinter mage made an affirmative sound under his breath, and nothing more. If she needed to talk, he would allow her the space to do so.

“I am the First of my Clan, Dorian. I was meant to be…I was meant to lead them one day. I always thought…I thought that _this_ was important, yes, but not so much so that the world would be _ruined_ if I failed. And now I have seen the price of my own inability to act. If I do not act, or if I do not act rightly, the entirety of the world falls. That is more than just being able to control Rifts and close them at will. That is more than just trying to close a hole in the sky and then returning to my home.”

“It is a…burden, my dear. A heavy one. But the entire Inquisition carries it with you, do they not?”

“I’m not certain of that. We are pulled so differently, and they all seem to expect me to lay down _my_ Gods and life to be their Herald. They want to raze me to my foundations and build up in a mockery of who I am. They do not want Aurum Lavellan. They want the Herald of Andraste.”

Dorian said nothing. Aurum leaned into him, afraid, for a moment, that she was taking this friendship too far, too fast, but Dorian let her have the movement and did not try and push her away until her candles had burned low. The comfort of another body against hers was soothing. It was something she had missed.

Aurum summoned mage-lights to assist in illuminating the small room. Her magic flowed freely and easily into small baubles of light. Her mage-lights were small little strings of light instead of one concentrated ball, little streamers and beads that danced in the air, tinged ever-so-slightly green.

Dorian made an appreciative sound under his breath, half-cooing over the magic. He reached up to trail his fingers through the thin streams of light. The disturbances made them fracture and split, still waving like thousands of tiny tendrils of light.

“Dalish magic?”

“Dalish magic,” Aurum admitted. “Are our schools so different?”

“They may just be. We should compare notes some time, dear Dalish.”

“As long as we do it where the Commander can see us and be scandalized by the Tevinter and Dalish doing so? I am at your disposal, serah.”

Dorian threw his head back and _laughed_ , the sound so bright and unexpected when pressed up against her sore heart and weary mind that Aurum couldn’t help but join in after a few moments, her peals of laughter catching even Dorian off-guard. She smiled, relishing the idea of scandalizing the stuck-up Templar with two mages doing decidedly un-Circle-approved magic.

“It will be an event to see, then.”

“Of course. Now, let’s get you out of here before tongues start wagging about the dashing, handsome, ravishing, well-dressed Tevinter Altus and the homely Dalish Herald. Goodness knows the Chantry doesn’t need another reason to hate me,” Aurum said, trying her hand at a Tevene accent to mock Dorian.

Dorian smiled, and bowed gallantly to her.

“As you say, Dalish. Clear the way, and I shall be gone. Do find me if you ever need to…talk. I would hate to watch you unravel over something that has not, and will not happen.”

Aurum kicked her chair out of the doorway and unlocked it for him. She opened the door for him. He dispelled the wards, and Aurum missed their half-familiar warmth. Tevinter magic was interesting and new and his wards had conveyed such a stern sense of _protection_ , that she was well and truly eager to learn about how he cast them and how that differed.

“Dareth shiral, Tevinter.”

He inclined his head to her and swept away, swaggering away in the fashion of Tevinter. Aurum watched him leave, appreciating the view the mage cut, what with his shapely muscles and shapelier-ass. She had no real interest in him. He was too…agh there was no way to explain it. Aurum just knew that there was no way there was going to be anything other than half-there flirtations. She was just fine with that. Dorian was a grand person to be around.

Aurum turned to the side, intending to return to her cabin and sleep the rest of the day and night away entirely. She needed to sleep, she needed sleep desperately. The ride back from Redcliffe had been plagued with mental terrors and nightmares. She felt more at ease now, and knew that now she would manage to sleep, even if it was just for a few hours. She hoped for more, but a few hours would be enough to keep the bags under her eyes at bay.

“Herald. A word.”

“ _Ar tu na’din_ ,” Aurum snarled beneath her breath, looking to the Commander with a sneer.

Cullen arched a brow at her. Aurum schooled her anger back behind her teeth and straightened her back, looking to him as evenly as she could manage to do. She was tired and wanted time and space to herself. 

“Pardon me, Commander. What did you want? And can it wait?”

“I need to speak with you.”

“That was already made clear. What did you wish to speak of, then? _And_ can it wait?”

He sighed, and looked away from her, as if seeking counsel in the stars that were still hours from showing themselves. Aurum waited, patiently for the Commander to say his piece, but nothing came. Her hands had started to shake again and she wanted nothing more than the comfort of her bed and pillow and blankets so she could block the world out and sing herself to sleep.

“Commander. Speak, or let me sleep. I have had a bad week, and I would rather this be done quickly. The mages will behave themselves, if that's what you're worried about them. Every last one of them just escaped a fate in the Imperium that would have had them at the ass end of some very bad things. They finally have freedom and will do nothing to endanger it. Let them relax, let them sleep. Allow me the same courtesy.”

She turned to enter her cabin again, fully intending to drink the rest of her tea, crush some herbs for sleeping soundly to stuff into her pillow, and then _sleep_ , but the Commander was clearing his throat and stepping forward, towards her. Her ears pinned back against her head, and she took a step away from him, deeper into the meager protection her current house provided.

“It would be better to speak in private, Herald.”

“Andaran atish’an, Commander,” Aurum grumbled, opening her door wide for the man. She did not _want_ to be polite, she wanted to bite and snarl and fight him every step he took towards her cabin, and as soon as he was inside, she wanted nothing more than to throw him out.

“I wanted to apologize, for how I may have spoken to you.”

Aurum stared at him, waiting to see if anything else was to follow that, and when nothing did, she narrowed her eyes.

“That is the worst way to start an apology. Leave my cabin.”

She moved towards him, intending to throw him out bodily if he did not step away, but he dodged her, both of his hands coming up in a warding...placating gesture. Aurum crossed her arms and glared.

“ _Herald_ , please I am making an effort here. I am…I was trained as a-”

“Templar, I know. You were trained from a young age, I'm sure, yes? A child, full of dreams, only hearing the side that lauded those who kept the _terrible, nasty_ ,  **scary** mages away? My childhood was full of the tales of what the Templars **do** , how they steal little da’mi from their families and never let them see the forests or Clan again. How I should be careful, be careful on the edges of the forest, little one?”

He stared at her, his mouth open. There was anger in her voice, but it was controlled. It was the bite of a winter's chill, this hiss and crackle of a fire too close to the skin, and he knew that he had done wrong.

“You, who would strip our gods from us, force us to kowtow to the Chant. You do all of that, with your _Templars_ , Knight-Commander. Would you have rather one of the Templars meant to protect the Divine had had this mark so that you would feel more at ease than serving with a Dalish apostate? Would you feel better about having to serve with a mage if you had a whole damned army of _them_ behind your back so you could make sure that I'm under control? One mage and a hundred hundred Templars to make sure I never think about doing _anything_ you deemed inappropriate?”

“That is _not-_ ”

“It is **exactly** what it is. You do not trust me or my magic.”

“Herald! Please! I want to apologize. I do. I just. I don’t know where to start. I feel like I started unfairly with you,” Cullen started, anticipating an interruption and trying to get his words out as fast as he could.

Aurum huffed.

“Please, Herald. I do want to apologize. I never meant to make you feel like-”

“A pox, a pariah, a stain upon the earth, a creature to be chained up in a Tower?”

 _“Yes_. Maker’s breath, _yes,_ alright? The mages…Fiona was telling me what you and the Tevinter-”

“His _name_ is Dorian,” she snapped.

“Fiona was telling me what you and _Dorian_ went through. Some of it, at least. You went a year into the future of where everything goes wrong and fought your way back out.”

“You would be lost without your Herald, I know. I came back to protect the people who had been hurt.”

“It’s not just that, Herald. You show an admiral devotion to your causes, even if I disagree with them.”

She rolled her eyes.

“I know. Thank you. Is that all? I was going to sleep. Unless you’re going to assist me with accomplishing that particular endeavor and get into bed with me, please…the door.”

The Commander flushed a color of crimson so deep Aurum swore he was _glowing_ in the dim light of her cabin. Her invitation had been a casual one, like the hundreds she had given to scouts and patrollers she had been out in the field with back with her Clan. There was something soothing about sleeping next to someone else. But he had taken it another way. 

“I, uh, I didn’t…I didn’t mean to, I guess I’ll be going now.”

Aurum could not help it. She had him on edge and stammering.

“Will you now?” Aurum purred, advancing on the Commander.

He backed up, away from her, his hands coming up to ward her off. He _completely_ forgot about his sword as she pressed herself up against him. They were of an equal height, but the Commander was shrinking down, away from her. She suddenly loomed in his vision, an elf with eyes that glittered like opals, and pale red tattoos that accentuated her face better than any make-up could ever hope to.

“Herald?”

Her grin was feral.

“Herald this is not appropriate at all…” he tried to start with, trying to move her away, trying to get her to stop grinning at him and step away.

Ah, she was too close, and he could smell the road on her, her sweat, her blood, _Andraste’s tits_ he could smell her _magic_ , burning just beneath her skin. He could feel the Templar-sense he had once been so proud of roused by her proximity, and knew, as he had always known, that there was more to her mage-skill than he could see. Her blood sang it to his senses. There were wholly inappropriate, irrational urges rising at the back of his mind. He almost missed the way her hand wrapped around his waist. While he was wearing his armor and could not feel anything other than the slight pressure on his body it was there. He **knew** she was there. He could feel even that much and it was more – more than – _Maker_ she was right there and-

The door behind him clicked and swung open, sending him tumbling backwards, out onto the ground on his ass. Aurum leaned on the lintel of her door, offering him a pale ghost of a true smile. He scrambled to his feet, hastily trying to not look like he had just had _that_ happen with the Herald, but she was waving to him and already turning away.

“Dareth shiral, Commander.”


	4. The Prayer

The next few days were a blur. The mages were being instructed on what they were to be doing when the Breach was approached, and how to guard themselves against whatever demons could be lurking on the other side of the Fade, looking to cross over a weakened Veil to possess them. The few Templars that had joined the Inquisition were instructed on how to help the mages, under Aurum’s stern guidance that they were not to bring any unneeded harm to any of the mages, lest they want to deal with her.

There was so much _work_ to do. She could not go out and tend to the places where the Inquisition had a foothold, trusting instead that Scout Harding would continue to deliver the missives on what was happening and where so that she could look over them and make the decisions that had to be made. She had closed all but two of the Rifts in the Hinterlands, and was trying to think about the most timely way to get them all closed. Every place she went was plagued by those _damned_ Rifts and it never seemed as if the fights there were easy.

She meted out what meager power she had in order to ensure that any mage knew that they were welcome in the Inquisition, hoping to bolster their numbers by assuring families that no mage would be separated from them, and that they could leave at any time. The Inquisition was _NOT_ the Circle, this was not a place ruled by the Chantry or the Templars. This was where they could have the chance to do something worthwhile, something that could, perhaps, save the world and everyone in it. But if they did not want to be here? They did not have to be.

She sent her Council out, noting that as the days wore on, they all seemed far less likely to doubt her orders, accepting them with a short nod and then went about their task. They got a surprising amount done in that short time, searching down whatever they could find in old tomes that Leliana’s people seemed to bring back by the armful. Aurum declared those books of the highest importance, and wanted them kept where they could be moved quickly if an emergency occurred. Books were a rarity amongst the Dalish, and these ancient tomes could hold more secrets than they appeared to at first glance.

Solas was an everlasting help, as was Dorian. Between the three of them, and Fiona, they covered the majority of all magical traditions in Thedas. What they did not _practice_ , they knew of, and every so often Fiona would bring a hedge-mage along, or a healer from a distant part of Ferelden who knew something different about what they were trying to set up, and their opinions and knowledge were treated with the same gravitas as Solas’s words on the Fade as he had experienced it.

The Mage’s Council rankled some, and Aurum swore she saw the Commander pacing in the background whenever they met, but she could not turn her gaze away from what her fellow Fade-touched companions were doing. They were trying to solve a problem that could destroy the world, and if the Templar wanted to _lurk in the background_ , convinced of her wrongdoing at every turn, then he very well could.

* * *

“We have made all necessary preparations. We march on the Conclave tomorrow.”

Aurum snapped her head up from where she was looking on the map – the lone corner marked with the only Dalish marker, something she had insisted on when her Clan had first asked for her to assure them that she was well and alive and _not_ a prisoner of the Knight-Commander the Inquisition had in their retinue (and oh, to see the way Cullen’s face had dropped and he had ‘snuck’ a glance at her, a flush coloring the back of his neck and the tips of his ears), and looked to Cassandra.

“We are ready, then?”

“The mages assure me that they have a full and complete understanding of the theory they will be applying at the Breach. All we wait on now, is the dawn. Mother Giselle and those of the Chantry that remain will be leading us in the Chant tonight as we prepare.”

Aurum wished desperately for a window in the War Room so she could see how much time she had before dawn. She had hoped for more time, more warning so she could prepare herself as she needed. But the longer she waited here, the longer she dallied with the minutiae she no longer could bring herself to care about, the more time was slipping away for her to do what was _right_.

“Is that all, then, ser Advisors?” she questioned, trying to keep her voice even and failing to such a degree that they all gave her an odd look. Aurum did not quail beneath their stares, and met them evenly. She was high-strung and ready to bolt, but she had to maintain decorum. “I have…matters to tend to.”

“Herald, it would mean much to the people if you were there,” Josephine offered softly.

“I am Dalish, and she is not my God. I canno…I cannot stay for the entirety. I will be there to give face to the cause, but please, do not ask me to stand in silence as you worship. I…I have matters. To tend to.”

“Of course.”

The dismissal from Leliana was enough to send her nearly fleeing from the room. She had so much to prepare and so little time (the sun was hanging low in the sky already) and she was still going to have to show face at the Chantry to assure everyone that they had a figurehead worth following into the horrors of the Breach. She was the First of her Clan, she knew how that sort of thing worked, but it was different. These were not her Clanskin, they were not followers of the Creators, and they certainly were not of one mind on how to treat her.

She walked briskly to her cabin, shedding her armor as fast as she could manage, and slipping into the more relaxed leathers that she had made for herself after it was clear that there were no clothes that could fit her tall, lean frame. She was an _elf_ , and a strongly built one at that. Her muscle may be lithe, but she had curve enough to be ‘womanly’, but even so, the clothing she had been offered had never quite fit right until she had made it herself.

Humming a song to soothe herself, Aurum went about shaving the sides of her head once again, and then took a painstaking amount of time to braid her hair back as she had always done for formal occasions. She needed to be prepared, both for the Chantry and what would come after.

 _Creators_ there was not enough _time_.

She stood uncomfortably in the Chantry as the assembled turned towards her in supplication, and waited for the moment when the Commander would indicate that she could leave. When he finally gave her a nod, Aurum bowed deeply to the assembled and made her exit through a side door.

The moon was high in the night sky by that point, and with a curse under her breath, she scaled the wooden wall of Haven, not trusting the others in the camp to keep quiet about her midnight skulking. The air was crisp and frigid against her under-dressed skin, but Aurum knew that she had no time to go grab furs. But she was not planning on being out in the cold any longer than absolutely necessary. The furs would only put her even further behind schedule. She needed so much time to do things properly, and every moment of dalliance was one more that was dragging away from her.

She did not see the Chantry door open and the Commander peek his head out to see where she had gone so abruptly. But he saw _her_ just as her head disappeared over the side of the wall, and heard the crunch of snow beneath her feet as she landed heavily on the other side.

He frowned and gave chase, scrambling over the fence far less gracefully than she had. He heard her whispering, and then the gentle crooning of a hart. He just barely managed to struggle through the hip-deep snow to follow her, his heart dropping down into his gut. She was running away at the eve of battle. He should have known better than to trust her to stay, to do what she was meant to do. The Breach could not be closed without her and she was _leaving_.

He snarled beneath his breath and followed her footsteps, damning her elvhen lightfootedness. She was barely making impressions on the snow, lightly dancing across the top crust, while he had to trudge through the snow and hope to catch up. His breath caught in his throat whenever he tried to call her name, but he followed as best he could, tracking her light footsteps and the hart’s own heavy hoof-tracks.

Unexpectedly, her tracks moved towards the mountains, away from the path he was certain she would be taking to escape. She was walking deeper into the wilderness, where no path traced an easy way through.

He was too far behind her to see where she was, but he heard the echoes of her voice all around him. She was purring elvish at the hart, who huffed at her. He heard the snow crunch as the great beast…lay down. The trees were making it hard to see where she was, or what she was doing, if anything was being done. He followed her tracks through the thickening trees, intent upon dragging her back to Haven and tie her down if he had to. She would close the Breach, even if he had to drag her screaming from her cabin and pull her all the way there behind his horse.

“Stay still, da’vhenan, we are almost ready. I’m sure we’ll be noticed soon enough.”

He broke into the opening in the trees were _she_ was kneeling, surrounded by a semicircle of snowy figures. They all sang of magic to his senses, but Aurum seemed completely at ease in their midst. He could not recognize the shapes, but the way Aurum was petting the head of the last figure, he figured it was some Dalish custom.

“Hahren…Hahren na melana sahlin…”

Maker she was _singing,_ her voice breaking over the words. Cullen did not know the words, but they made his heart ache all the same. Tears sprang at the corner of his eyes, and he did not know if it was from the song or the biting winds whipping down the mountain. Aurum kept a hand on the snowy head of the wolf at her side, apparently unaware of Cullen's presence.

“Emma ir abelas,  
Souver’inan isala hamin  
Vhenan him dor’felas  
In Utherna na revas…”

Understanding flushed through him, as cold as the bite of steel, as he realized what was happening. She was _praying_. This was prayer. This was devotion, the same as was shown in the Chantry right now as the faithful called to the Maker to protect them from the horrors of the morrow. She knelt in the snow amidst poor formings of her pantheon, praying. This was not escaping her duties, it was trying to find a place to pray.

Shame colored his cheeks as he stood, transfixed by the sight. Moonlight washed over her, setting the crystalline snowflakes to glittering. Her huge hart was lying by her side, blocking the wind from her form, its horns catching the snow, it breath sending fog dancing over her. She was wearing thin, formal leathers, and nothing more. Even in his armor, he could feel the snap of the cold, and she hardly seemed bothered at all.

“Vir sulahn’neh,  
Vir dirthera,  
Vir samahl la numin  
Vir lath sa’vunin.”

Aurum bowed low, first to the form of Elgar’nan, father of her people. She did not sing for him, it was not justified. He was her vengeance, her desire to burn things to ashes. Singing when she wanted protection would not please anyone. Then, she rose, and bowed again, to Mythal, murmuring praises and adorations to her Mother-Goddess in the native tongue, losing herself in the prayers. Falon’Din was next, who was graced with a kiss on his snow-form, and a deep bow coupled with a whispered “Lethanvir” for his blessing. Dirthamen was given his respects, but this day was not about secrets. Andruil, she touched, cradling the snow-form in both hands and whispering the prayer she had been taught when she took her vallaslin. Sylaise she lit with fire in appreciation for the gifts she had given her people, and beneath her breath, Aurum prayed that she would soon be home again. June, she had nothing for, but she touched a hand to her hart, and prayed for the shemlin-crafted items that would be used to be blessed, regardless. Ghilan’nain was the last she sang to, gently dusting fresh snow over the small form she had made for that goddess, and Aurum prayed for a swift journey.

That only left one.

Fen’Harel.

Clan Lavellan had a Keeper to protect them from the treachery of the wolf, but that was tradition. Aurum did not fear the Trickster.

She bowed low to the wolf, smiling around her too-sharp teeth. She knew the wolf well, she knew _them_ as well as she knew her _skin_.

“You are a bad influence on me, Fen’Harel. Protect me, watch over me, keep me from the tricks of others, and let only you fool me. Better to know the wolf is amongst my life than to worry for the little pups who play at games. Fen’Harel enansal.”

There was a sound from behind her, and Aurum barely had to turn her head to see the familiar flash of scarlet. So she had been followed. By the Commander, of all people. Her lips curled back. She should have heard him sooner. He was shem, he did not walk in silence. The footsteps of her hart must have masked them. She swallowed her anger and turned back to her God-forms.

“Shall I repeat my prayers in your tongue for your sake? I would hate to have you think that I was out here, on the eve of the moment when I am to do what your precious Inquisition wants done, doing something _inappropriate_ for the Herald of Andraste,”Aurum sighed, turning back to the pale shadows of proper statues for her Gods.

“Maker, _no_ , I thought you were-”

“Blaspheming? I was singing a dirge, in actuality. An old one, from the time when death was a journey that could be returned from, not a finality. I was then asking my Gods to protect me, and thanking them for their gifts. It is not too different than what happens in your Chantry. Just to my Gods, instead of yours. Must I remind you, again, that I am Dalish, and these are the things I do?”

She stood, and the Commander took a quick step back. Her magic was curling around her dangerously, and with a backhanded gesture, she obliterated the little statues she had crafted out of fresh snow. Her gaze turned to him, and in the moonlight, her eyes glinted as cold as the snow that surrounded her.

“Do you want to take me back to Haven, then?”

“I-I…Maker I’m _sorry_ , I did not think that you would-”

“Want to pray? You seemed perfectly happy to have me come preside over the prayers of your Cult, but apparently I cannot have the time to pray to my own Gods. Da'vhenan, back to the stables.”

She hard turned to her mount as she spoke. There would be no reason to ride her hart back to Haven, because, clearly, that was now less important than assuring the Commander that she wasn't going to run away. The hart jumped oddly to its hooves, in the same manner resting horses did, and after bending its head to Aurum’s outstretched hand, bounded off into the night, leaving Cullen alone. In the forest. With a Dalish mage. Who he had interrupted. While. She. Was. Praying.

“Shall we, then, Knight-Commander? I won’t bother you with any more of my prayers, don’t worry. I know how it unnerves to be constantly reminded that the people you are with do not respect your own Gods in the slightest.”

She had the singular joy of watching his blush spread from ear to ear, a wide enough band that she could rest her entire thumb along the broadest part of it, easily. Not that she was thinking of running her fingers along his jaw, to trace the blush on his throat as well. She wasn't. Not at all.

The walk back to Haven was silent after that, the Commander’s jaw clenched tight as he struggled through the snowdrifts. Aurum kept easy pace with him, her footsteps light atop the snow, and said nothing else to raise his ire.


	5. The Destruction of Haven

Her life just could not go easy for one cataclysmic event, could it?

The Breach had been closed, and she had been in the middle of a conversation with her partners-in-crime about having Josephine scrounge some money up for a big banquet. Her mood had been the highest it had been in the entire time she had been involved in this whole fiasco, and it showed. She was bouncing from foot to foot, nearly dancing with all of the joy inside of her.

She had done it, the Mages had done it, and they were heroes. They had done something impossible without the backing of any Circle and Aurum could not be prouder. She had changed into her formal leathers again, not minding the places that were still damp from her prayers the night before, because the danger was over. All that was left was closing the Rifts that remained and then she would be _done_. She could go _home_.

That pride, that happiness, had turned to ash at the first scream.

A scout came scrambling into Haven, screaming his warning before collapsing. Aurum caught him, and after healing whatever he had done to his body to return the message that fast, she turned to the open gates. She could hear the Commander barking orders already, trying to muster the attention of whoever had not already heard. Aurum chanced a glance in the direction the scout had come, and could already see the lights of torches closing in. Thousands upon thousands of torches.

Haven was under attack.

She did not think. These people were as close as she had to Clan in that moment, and she was the First of her Clan.

Aurum whistled, loud and piercing, making more than one person in the immediate area flinch. Her huge hart bounded the small gate that was meant to keep it penned in, and was at her side instantaneously, without a saddle. She could ride without one. She had to see that every single person who was in the immediate area got to the relative safety of Haven.

She did not care that she had no weapon or armor. She had people to protect.

Aurum did nothing so cruel as put heel to her hart, merely trusted that the great animal would know what she needed from it. Creators be good, it did, and turned its huge head to the next-nearest encampment. In an emergency, the young, the lame, the slow were left behind. In a Clan, that was unacceptable. Every last person needed to get to the aravel, every last person needed to make it to the Chantry.

The hart bounded away, and Aurum sent a prayer to Mythal. She did not want to have to invoke Elgar’nan to avenge these people. Not tonight.

* * *

The fighting had reached Haven by the time Aurum returned, leading a small group of mages who had been out practicing, far from the prying eyes of the Templars that “sneakily” watched them. She had her arm around the oldest, a waif of an ancient one, with the vallaslin of an elf promised to Sylvaise.

There was a shallow cut on the poor woman’s head from a branch that Aurum had not seen before it had lashed across both of their faces. Aurum could not feel the line of fire that traced around her temple and seeped blood. It was there, for a surety, but she could not feel it. She was too far lost in the rhythm of battle. There were people to protect. Intruders to _hunt_.

She charged through the open doors of Haven, her mages in line behind her, all rushing to get to the poor safety Haven’s wooden walls offered from the chaos outside. Aurum leaped from her hart.

“Krem!”

The second of the Chargers snapped his attention to her.

“Get these people to the Chantry safely!”

Krem nodded, and formed the mages up into a good enough blockade of people before having the other Chargers take up defensive positions around the small group. The mages clutched their staffs, but more than one of them had a defiant set in their jaw. They would fight to get to the Chantry. They would fight for their lives.

“The Boss is at the trebuchets! They’re trying to line it up to make a strike!” Krem called back as Aurum took stock of the fighting around her.

Trebuchet it was, then.

She turned on her heel and darted towards the huge siege weapons, stooping low only once to grab a pair of daggers out of the chest of some unfortunate…red lyrium-laced…thing and continue her mad dash. She was _Dalish_ , and she knew how to kill with her knives.

There was silence before she struck, the moment between moments, and she saw her target as clearly as she had seen the wild animals she had once hunted. That was a lifetime ago. The...creature had a sword raised for a killing blow, but died as two daggers sunk deep into its chest, sliding between ribs and severing all things vital there. Her force pushed the creature to the ground, and she did not stop for a moment, pulling the blades free and charging on. The things that were attacking were dotted with, consumed by, and covered in red lyrium.

“Herald!”

“ _Aurum!_ ”

Her friends called out to her as she broke into the clearing where the trebuchets were. They were embroiled in battle with the red lyrium abominations, struggling to push them back from the siege weapons.

She was a mage without a staff or armor, but that did not matter to her. The Dalish had their ways, and she followed them. The daggers left her hands at an astonishing clip, flying forward to hit the eye and throat of a…a Templar? A creature that had once been Templar, hard enough to send the thing’s head snapping back.

Aurum pulled lightning out of the sky, binding it to her will and forcing those who fought her friends to stagger backwards from the sudden jolt of electricity. Dorian, Solas and Bull were defending the siege weapon as Sera cranked on the handle as fast as she could to get it readied to fire.

Three mages, an archer, and one heavy-hitter and there was a fucking _archdemon_ on the other guy’s side. Not…great odds for them.

Solas threw a staff toher, and when she caught it, it was still slick with the blood of whoever had died holding it. That did not matter. She had a 'proper' mage’s weapon now, and she could start dealing damage to protect her friends.

It was a long time after that, that they were all running through Haven towards the Chantry, doing their best to pick up those who had fallen behind, or tried to fight, only to be overwhelmed. She…could not save them all, she knew that, but that did not stop her trying. Blood dripped from a dozen cuts, bruises rose painfully dark on her skin, and she could feel her bones grinding against each other where she was certain that there was a break in her collarbone.

The Commander had the Chantry door open and a half-circle of warriors standing outside of it, holding attackers off long enough for the last true stragglers to struggle through. Bull, Dorian, Solas and Sera all rushed inside, but Aurum made it as far as the door before turning sharply and casting a barrier, a healing spell, and then throwing fire and ice at the attackers in massive amounts.

The half-circle gave her just enough room to move freely, and her staff spun patterns to intricate to follow with a tired eye. Explosions of fire took out groups all at once, immolating them where they stood. Ice trapped the largest opponents in place, making them easy targets. Lightning cracked down out of the smoky sky, tossing the attackers around like so many children's toys.

It was a dance for her as she moved and accommodated the actions of the others. She left openings for the last of the stragglers to come inside, stepping to the side and allowing them to pass by her, casting and re-casting barriers as it was necessary to get the brawlers in front of her room.

“That’s them all! Get back inside!”

She dully recognized the Commander’s voice coming from behind her, and stepped left to allow the closest warrior to abdicate his post and rush in. Then she stepped right, and the next closest man retreated into the Chantry. This continued until she was the last one standing in front of the Chantry door and the Commander was _screaming_ for her to get inside.

Aurum was about to set another spell, just one more to try and bolster the defenses that they had, but a hand grabbed her by the back of the neck and pulled her backwards with enough force to a lift her off of her feet. She stumbled backwards into the warmth of the Chantry, but with her battle-song still roaring in her ears, she did not recognize the move as friendly.

She sprang to her feet with the ethereal grace of the elf, and with her staff still in hand, turned on the one who had grabbed her, one hand immediately going to the throat of the offender, skimming over the metal they had worn to protect themselves from such a thing. Her staff came up, lighting with arcane energies and she pointed it directly at the blurry face of her attacker.

“ _Hamin! Hamin, Aurum!”_

She snarled and whipped her head to the speaker. It took her a precious long moments to recognize the speaker as Solas, who was reaching out to her, a spell already on his hands. Solas. Her eyes flicked to the next person. Dorian. Bull. Varric. Sera. Cassandra. Roderick, tended by someone she did not know. Josephine, Leliana.

She turned back to the man whose throat she held. Slowly, his features fell into familiarity. The Commander. He had pulled her away from the danger outside. His pulse was the one beating frantically against her fingers. His eyes were wide, but...black. His pupils were wide and staring, and for a long, long moment, Aurum stared at him, unsure of what was happening right then, but knowing it was something she should be aware of. The battle song roared in her ears still, urging movement, motion, attack, parry, touch, hold, grasp. The song _demanded_ of her, and Aurum had to remind herself that this was not the time or place for the song to be sung anymore.

Her hand released his throat all at once, and she stepped away, exhaling slowly.

“Abelas, Commander. You...startled me,” Aurum said softly, not trusting herself to look him back in the eye again, lest the song return to the forefront of her mind once again.

The man did not give her a response, just rubbed his throat and stared at her, not entirely certain what had just happened between them. She had stared at him, with her hand on his throat and her magic dancing at the tip of the staff. She could have killed him, and would have, had Solas not intervened. The magic she had been wielding was nothing like the Circle’s battle-spells. They had been twisted, altered in some way to become more than what they had been. She had pinned him against the door, her eyes bright with magic and he had…done nothing.

He stared as she went around the Chantry, counting heads and healing wounds that were minor. The large ones, she left to the healers who had the lives of the wounded already in their hands. She left her staff behind, healing with just her hands and words, and everyone looked from her, back to Cullen. Cullen began organizing the men and women, calming them, searching for options to get everyone to safety while an army breathed down their necks.

Aurum waited for what would come, offering comfort as best she could to those that needed it. She wiped blood from skin, meted out small portions of her magic to heal wounds, not wanting to exhaust herself if there was more fighting to be done. Something else would be coming, she was sure of it. What could they do? Nothing. What would they do? Something.

So when it was revealed that there was a path out the back, Aurum already knew what would be required. The talk of the unkillable darkspawn magister named Corypheus, the armies he possessed, Corypheus' need to have _her_ …there was only one path.

“I’ll go out and get his attention. Everyone else escapes out the back. I should be able to stall long enough to make sure he and his army looks for me, and no one can catch a Dalish if they’re running.”

Aurum startled those talking into silence, all of them looking at her as if she were mad. Which was, after all, not too far removed from the truth.

“You all know it is the only way. If there’s no distraction, everyone dies. If I distract, most of you can live, regardless, following the path Roderick knows. So I’ll distract.”

They stared, and she saw Josephine cover her mouth in shock.

“There’s a…the last trebuchet. If we move it, we could fire it at the mountain. Trigger an avalanche. Take out the whole damn army…and Haven. But I'm sure you'll find a way...”

Cullen left the sentence hanging in the air, staring directly at Aurum. She met his gaze evenly, disguising her surprise. He almost sounded sad that she might not make it out. She was, more than likely, going to die. He knew that, he knew that when he suggested the course of action, but he was right. It was the best thing to do.

“Then I’ll do that too, and buy everyone some few extra minutes. Should be easy enough, Commander.”

The brevity in her words was not matched by the way she looked towards the door. She had said her prayers and sang her dirge. By the counting of her people, she could die in glory. Even if this death was all she had to give now, it would be one she had chosen. It was right to die like this. These people deserved life. That was an easy enough choice to make.

“You’re not going out there alone, Sunshine,” Varric growled, hefting Bianca over his shoulder.

Aurum’s ear twitched at the nickname. It would figure that Varric had done research on her name. She thought she saw him grin out of the corner of her eye. Ass. Authors and their stupid desire to know what everyone’s name meant and make sure the meaning matched the person.

“Someone has to tell the stories Varric. Make sure you tell everyone that I looked as radiant as the dawn, or something deserving of that nickname.”

“We’re not letting you walk alone, Aurum.”

With a sigh, she turned to her circle of companions. She had to take a deep breath to steady herself.

“Dorian, you are the only mage here who knows what and how the Tevinter Venatori are working. Your death would hamstring this entire operation. Alexius did not work alone, and that would not be his only gambit. The Elder one that is talked about, the one that closes in on us, he must have a weakness, and in understanding the magic they are using, we can understand him. You are too important, you cannot come.”

The Tevinter mage blinked, his eyebrows shooting up. He opened his mouth to object, but Aurum was already moving to the next person.

“Josephine and Leliana cannot come out to fight. Josephine is a diplomat, and while I’m certain she has some small skill with a knife, we need her alive to broker relations in the way only she can. Leliana’s network would be lost without her, and that cannot happen. They must stay. They cannot come.”

Neither of them objected, but she saw the way Leliana’s hand clenched. Sympathetically, Aurum’s hand did as well. The difference was that Aurum’s hand glowed with the mystic power of whatever had been given to her to close rifts.

“Solas is the most knowledgeable mage there is about the Fade. Having him die would put back any research being done by decades, if not centuries. His mastery of Fadewalking, though apostasy by the Chant, is invaluable. He cannot come with me. He must go with the others.”

“Bull is the leader of the Chargers. Those men and women are as much a part of him as he is of them. His loss would destroy them. They follow his command, not the Inquisition. Besides, the Krem Puffs just don’t sound as menacing. He must stay.”

“Cassandra is the Seeker, the Hand of the Divine with Leliana. She gives our mission a backbone, she supplies us with the legitimacy we need. She cannot come. Her loss would dissolve the Inquisition.”

“Sera’s network rivals Leliana’s. The Red Jennies of Thedas are a people we cannot lose. The insight that they feed us about the movements of nobles only strengthens Josephine’s work, and enables us to win back the adoration of people who have been lain low by those who do not deserve to do so.”

She drew herself up to her full height, not minding the sharp ache that started in her back and down her sides as she did so. Pain was life. Life was pain.

“I am the only one that can go. So I will go. The rest of you are too important.”

The Commander cleared his throat from behind her, and Aurum realized she had completely forgotten him.

“Commander, you cannot come with me either, nor can your men. They are needed to keep the smallfolk safe.”

He flushed, and looked away from her, reaching for his sword. She was correct, but that did not make it any easier to handle. Aurum was their Herald, and the legitimacy that the Inquisition needed in order to do what they were doing. Aurum was important for more than just that one reason, though. He just did not know how to say those things to her.

Aurum inclined her head to him gently, the most polite gesture she had ever made towards him and _meant_. Slowly, she turned back to everyone else, her heart rate suddenly spiking as she realized she had something to ask. She had almost forgotten in her preparations. She had never thought it would come to this. Any other time, they would have found her note she had left in her clothing, with the few belongings she now claimed when they went through her things to send back to her Clan, but her cabin was probably already burning, and with it, that note.

“Josephine…I have a favor to ask of you. If I cannot return, or manufacture my escape…please sent word to my Clan. Tell them how I died, send them ashes from haven. They will want to bury me, and if my body cannot be found, they should know that Haven's death was mine own as well. Let them know how I died.”

Her voice trembled, and she hated that. This was not something she wanted to ever speak of and she had no private moment to say _why_ it was so important, because she could not expect the shemlen to understand, and she did not need them to understand, she just wanted them to, Creators, she wanted them to make sure that her tree was planted and she was not lost to the ages.

She shook her head. Life was pain. This was life. The scars that circled her right eye ached. That was nothing. Life was pain.

“Commander Cullen. The door if you please.”

She did not wait to see if Josephine agreed, or if Leliana looked to her with questions. The door of the Chantry opened only the smallest amount and she slipped through. She had not had the time to put armor on, and as the door behind her clicked shut,she realized that her staff was inside. Good. She would die as Dalish did. If only she had found her staff that had been lost at the Conclave. She could have really died with authenticity.

She stormed through the ruins of Haven, screaming curses in her mother’s tongue. She invoked Elgar’nan and Anduril between breaths, swearing that her actions were for vengeance for a life she could not have, that her hunt was one to protect those who could yet live in peace.

An arrow, fletched with black and red hit her in the hip, jerking her backwards, and she _howled_. Aurum wrenched the offensive projectile from her body and howled anew, her head thrown back, her second promise burning at her soul, her voice the wolf’s song. This was more than vengeance. This was more than justice and a good hunt. This was her last stand, and she would _stand_. Magic howled with her, illuminating the sky with lightning and fire, even as frost cracked the earth she stood on.

Far, far removed from her, on a path to safety, the howling of the First of Clan Lavellan drew gasps. The sound was a feral one, more animal than elvhen, but there was no doubt it came from Aurum. Solas was the first to move, leaving his position in line and running back down the path, cursing floridly in the tongue of the elvhen, his face drawn into an uncharacteristic snarl.

“She could not have _dared_ ,” the elvhen mage growled savagely beneath his breath.

Varric ran after the Solas, much slower on his shorter legs, but then Bull was behind him, hefting the dwarf under one arm as he too, ran back to Aurum’s side. Sera and Dorian exchanged a glance, she shrugged, he nodded, and then, together, they raced back down the mountain side, and with a sigh, Cassandra gave chase, unsheathing her sword and readying her shield, growling something about someone needing to make sure the fool mages and archer got back safely to the group after this foolishness was done.

The Commander stared at their retreating backs, and again, the feral howl of an elvhen mage battling for her life broke over the sounds of battle and the screaming of an archdemon.

He stayed behind, high enough on the mountain to be safe from what would come. He saw the archdemon land, still screeching. He could not see her, but soon enough, Bull, Dorian, Sera, Varric, Cassandra and…trailing behind, staring at Haven with apprehension, was Solas.

“Where is the Herald?” the Commander snapped, looking behind them, hoping against hope that Aurum was going to be jogging up behind them, bloodied, but smiling.

“She sent us away. She said she was right behind us, she just needed to set the stone to sky and she was going to be behind us. But the archdemon… _da’assan,_ she was supposed to be right **behind** us.”

Solas stared at the burning ruins of Haven, and with him, so did the rest of the Inquisition. From the trebuchets there was a scream and the crack of the great siege weapon being fired. The flaming payload went up, up, _up_ , into the sky, arching towards the mountain. No red-blonde woman raced up the hill after them. The snow creaked, the snow roared, and the avalanche consumed Haven.

“We have to move. There could be more fighters. We will find her. But we have to move.”

No one could tell who had spoken. But the words had been said. Now they must hope that the words were truth and that Aurum would come back. Slowly, they all turned their backs on the ruins, and began their pilgrimage to safety.


	6. The Herald's March

Her breath came in labored pants, every exhalation sending a misting of blood out of her mouth to paint the front of her leathers. She whimpered with every step, trying to hold the hand that wasn't flashing green fire to the worst of her wounds. Aurum could not believe she survived the snow’s fall. The avalanche should have killed her. It should have crushed her, but she had fallen into a ravine…A ravine she could not remember having seen in all of her explorations of Haven, a ravine that should have been filed with snow, but wasn’t.

She staggered down the ravine. Her mark…the _anchor_ , as Corypheus had called it, ached in away it had not done before, and was still spitting fade-energies. She could hear it whispering at her, and she had to carefully shake her head whenever she found hersef slowing her forced march to stop and listen. Aurum would investigate it later. She needed to find the others. She needed to know they were all alive. She had nearly died to save them, and she would hate to know that they had perished anyway, despite her best efforts to keep them all safe.

The cold of the outside world hit her like a slap as she ventured out of the ravine, and her vision swam. Gasping for air, she turned her head towards the mountains behind her. That was where they had gone on the trail Roderick had remembered. She had remembered the dying man outlining where they were to go. That was her path too, then. Aurum clutched her thin leather clothing around her and lifted her arm to try and block the wind that whipped down the mountain. She had no idea how much time had passed. She knew her head ached, and there was a sticky spot just over her left temple that was blood over a wound. The more she tried to think, however, the more things slipped away from her.

She felt sick to her stomach, and every step made her nausea worse, which Aurum knew meant that she was really injured, and badly. She needed to find a healer. She could not trust herself to cast any sort of spell. The results could be disastrous if she tried. No matter how much she wanted to be warm, to be whole and able to walk without a limp, to even be able to breathe without being in _pain_ , she was not going to risk using magic. She could kill herself.

She had lived this far. Aurum would not die now.

The mountain loomed in front of her, obscured by the blizzard that whipped around her. She passed by old encampments atop the snow, with cold coals and snow starting to collect over the top of them. Creators, how long had she been asleep?

There were rare enough trail-signs that she rather hoped she was following the path of the Inquisition, and not the people who had attacked. If she had enough magic in her, and a mind that was not scrambled by pain, she could have made sure and known instantly, but the very thought of wearing a skin other than her own made her feel so acutely ill that Aurum began to worry that she may actually be in real danger.

Real danger, of course, not referring to darkspawn or magisters from a time long past. Real Danger was danger she could not escape, or talk her way out of, or magic from existence or slip away from. Real Danger was being out in an unfamiliar place in the middle of a blizzard with no furs to try and keep her warm, no magic to bring to bear, and wounds that she was nearly certain would soon be itching with frostbite.

This was really dangerous. She could die out here. Creators, she could _die_ out here.

“There she is! Herald! _Herald!_ ”

Someone was screaming, their voice a mere whisper over the howling of the blizzard, and she turned towards them. She heard them running down the slope of the mountain and wanted to warn them away from doing that. One avalanche sometimes lead to second or third ones, and with them running down the side of it, they could easily trigger a-

The mountain shifted beneath her feet, and she knew that they had indeed done what she had feared they could do. She couldn't raise her voice fast enough, couldn't pull her magic around her, couldn't do anything but -

“Herald!”

Someone reached for her hand, and Aurum reached for them in return. She felt the hand, warm and firm, wrap around her own, and she _pulled_ , running parallel to the shifting snow, pulling them behind her. She had just barely enough magic that she could use to sense the nearest safe-place. Land sense, earth sense, all of that was innate, and she did not fear for its use. Aurum trusted her magic explicitly, and while the person she was dragging along may not know why she was running unerringly towards something that did not look like safety, Aurum knew what she was doing.

Or at least, she knew what her magic was telling her.

Or…at least she knew what she thought her magic was telling her.

She threw her body at what looked like a solid wall of snow, praying quickly to the Creators that she had done correctly in following what she had thought was right. The wall crumbled and the two of them stumbled into a small cave that was hardly big enough to be called a cave, but it was solid and safe. The avalanche sealed them in, forming a crushing wall of snow just outside the gap of the cave’s mouth but they were safe. They were alive.

Belatedly, so very belatedly, Aurum noticed her hands were shaking. She was trembling. Shivering. Nausea had not left her and the dizziness had come back. She staggered backwards until her back was pressed against the furthest wall of the small cave. The only sensation of stability came from resting her back against that wall and she had to close her eyes and breath sharply to make certain that she did not fall. 

“ _Herald_?!”

She looked at the person she had kind-of rescued, blinking pain and cold out of the way of seeing who it was. Blond hair and scarlet…everything swam together, but her mind sluggishly put a name to the colors and hazy aura around him. She knew him, and the way it felt like his song was the roar of a lion finding freedom. Oh. right. Him. 

“Ah, Commander. Hello. Kind of you to join me, so, uh, aneth ara, I guess.”

“You’re shaking,” he said, looking down at her as she started inspecting the small little cave they were now in, searching for fractions or fissures that could cause it to collapse on them.

“I’m wearing leathers that have been soaked entirely through by snow. I’m also injured. If I _wasn’t_ shaking, it’d be because I was dying. Shaking at this point is just indicative of my body backsliding. I need to get warm and I need to not be in these wet clothes. As soon as the avalanche settles out, we can probably carve our way out and up and get back to the camp your men have probably set up.”

Her voice wavered as the shaking intensified, and trying to make it seem as if it were intentional, Aurum sank to the floor of the cave, curling into a small ball and hugging her wet legs to her wet chest. She ached from the cold. Leather was misery when it was frozen, and she had nothing else. Hopefully she would sleep before she froze. There was some small victory in not being aware when you die. 

Small, small victory.

“Could you use your magic to make fire, then? Dry out your clothes and keep us both warm while we wait for the scouts to come by and get us.”

“I _have_ a fucking head wound, Commander,” she sneered, some of the venom lost in the way her voice warbled as she turned and pointed to the offending wound. “It’s equally as likely that I manage to get us warm as I blow us both to smithereens. I can’t think straight enough to manage any of my spells, or you would have come across a very different scene when your scouts decided to fuck up the mountain with another avalanche.”

“I, ah, I see.”

Aurum could not formulate a properly scathing response. All the heat had gone out of her, and the only thing that was left was cold so deep and biting that she felt like she was burning inside.

She was curled in on herself to the point where she had to actually look up at the Commander when she heard an oddness in his movements. He was stripping off his armor, organizing it neatly at the back of the cave, leaving him in the mere cloth and leather and fur. Aurum envied the fur. She wanted it. He looked at her, caught her gaze, and then blushed so furiously Aurum was concerned he might have actually hurt himself. No man should be able to turn that red across his cheeks and nose without severely injuring the blood vessels there.

“Herald, if you…take off the wet clothes, we can, ah, I mean, the body temperature of humans is naturally higher than that of the elves, so I could, I mean, we could…”

“If you are suggesting we share body heat, I would punch you for making me be a part of one of the most overused plot clichés in Varric’s fucking books if I wasn’t certain I was starting to lose feelings in my toes and fingers.”

The Commander swallowed hard, but did nothing else other than avert his eyes as Aurum began to strip out of her wet leathers. Her smallclothes were much less covering than they had been when she had taken that gash to her side, and she heard the poor Commander curse under his breath when she turned and bent to undo the laces on her boots and down the sides of her legs. Blood had made some of the leather stick uncomfortably tight to her skin, and when she pulled it away from her body, it tended towards pulling back, leaving fresh blood dripping down her legs and torso.

Wincing, she pulled the clothes away anyway, leaving her in some very skimpy smalls. She hadn’t been wearing armor, so she did not need the extra layer to keep from chafing in uncomfortable places. The unwanted side effect of this was that –

“You…have a lot of tattoos.”

Aurum glared at the Commander and batted his hand away when it reached for the milk-pale lines that danced over her hips and reached up her stomach, towards her ribs. He looked at her guiltily and blushed. Again.

“Yes. I do. I made a promise to serve my Clan. The best way to remember is to have it etched into your skin.”

She edged uncertainly from foot to foot. Her socks had been frozen as well, and standing on the freezing cold ground was starting to make her feet ache. She was not, however, going to approach the Commander until he made it clear that he was fine with it. Maybe if she curled up under his arm, and wrapped all of that fucking cloth he wore around her, she could sleep for a few minutes. That should get rid of the splitting headache she had.

He made some gesture that she decided to take as an invitation to curl into him, and Aurum moved faster than she thought she could with her current state, to seek out the warmth of the Commander. He was gracious enough to let her steal his fur-lined mantle and wrap them over herself before she was worming her way further into his clothing, pressing frigid skin against his own. How it ended up that Aurum was half into his clothing, buried in as much of the excess fabric as possible, he did not know, but all at once, there she was, trembling and shaking into his _skin_.

Her face was buried in the crook of his neck and his own furs now tickled his nose as she tried to siphon his heat away from him. She was half-inside his shirt, and he was certain that if there had been much extra space in his pants, he would have had one of her naked legs pressed to his own.

He swallowed the lump in his throat at the image of their bodies pressed to each other’s. Aurum slid one of her legs to the other side of his hips and sat in his lap, pulling him close to her for a moment so she could cross her legs behind his back and pull herself flush against him. Her arms were under his shirt, and she was embracing him lovers did. Her face did not leave the place she had first had it, and she wiggled in his lap to get comfortable. Despite the circumstances, and everything between them, it was still a woman in his lap - a _beautiful_ woman in his lap. Anyone who refused to describe Aurum as beautiful was just not correct but that really was the source of the problem because she _was_ beautiful and she _was_ in his lap.

“Herald, I-”

“Creators, _please,_ shut up, Commander. I’m trying not to freeze to death. Lay back and think of Andraste or whatever you Templars do to avoid temptation if you can’t handle some pretty woman in your lap without getting ideas.”

“I’m not a-”

“Cullen. Shut up.”

Her breath was hot on his neck, and her growled assertion sent a ripple of magic across her skin…and across his. He bit back the groan at the back of his throat as the very dregs of lyrium in his blood reached for her magic. Lyrium wanted to be used by mages, wanted to explode into magic, and she was _right_ _there_. It was tantalizing and tempting and in silence, all there was her breathing as it evened, and slowed.

It felt like agonizing hours before her body started to warm, which Cullen was very thankful for, as it meant he was now far less cold. He was still having the problem where he wanted to bury his face in her breasts to be closer to the heart that was pumping _magic_ through her veins, but he could resist. He had resisted this long, even after so many of his brothers succumbed to it. Templars were bound to lyrium, and everything that lyrium wanted. Lyrium wanted to be used. Magic called to magic. He wanted. He wanted and his body wanted and ached and the pull of the lyrium to the magic in the now-sleeping mage was slowly driving him mad.

He sat still and recited the Canticle of Transfiguration under his breath. He would not move his hands to skim the narrowness of her waist, or pinch the curve of her thigh. He would not turn his head to mouth at the pulse-point of her neck and feel the magic burning through her body. He was not a Templar. And even if he had been, he had never been the sort to fall to something so disgusting. He was above that, above the bounds of the order and even if this was a situation beyond anything he could have ever been put into before, he was not going to disgrace himself. 

The Canticle lulled him, gave him something else to think of, something to occupy his mind with other than obsessing over Aurum's every minute movement and his memories of how she moved in general. It gave him something other than her stature, her cheekbones, the color of her eyes to remember. It made him focus on his faith instead of the one called Herald who had walked with Andraste in the Fade and was touched by a purpose greater than anything he could have ever -

" _Fuck_ ," he hissed, trying to shake the thoughts away without disturbing Aurum from her place in his lap. This wasn't working. He needed to take a different route of thought because she was distracting him as neatly as she ever did, just by sleeping in his lap and leeching away his heat.

* * *

“Commander. Ungh, C _ommander_. _Please_.”

There was warmth in his lap and the tingle of magic under his skin, and he did not move for fear of disturbing it, even as something nagged at his senses, urging him towards consciousness. Aurum whined and tried to move away, but he had his arms wrapped around her and his grip was a vice. He was holding her tight, possessive in sleep over something he did not want to lose. Well and good, they were stuck in here together, but...Cullen has his mouth up against her right ear. Every soft exhalation he made, every puff of hot, wet, air, every half-asleep whimper and whine as he thought whatever it was he was holding was trying to leave, was just _right_ into her ear. Her sensitive, sensitive ears. She really needed him to stop. She needed him to stop **doing** that because it was…

“Creators, Cullen, please s-stop,” she whimpered, pushing on his chest. She did not want to go further away from him – he was warm, after all, but when Aurum tried to move her head away from his, to get her ear away from his mouth, he pulled her closer again, his hand pressing insistently in between her shoulderblades and keeping her still.

This was not helpful. It wasn't helpful because he was strong and muscled and holding her tightly. He was a terror with his sword and he commanded with authority that others often lacked. He was beneath her, holding her close, unwilling to let her go. Possessive, powerful, proud, and Aurum was just bleary enough from sleep to consider this all positive instead of the general annoyance she usually thought of it as.

This man was a Templar. He was a symptom of everything wrong with the way the Chantry treated things. He was abrasive, he had no respect for her culture, her history, anything about who she was. Hells, Aurum was pretty certain he did not even know her name properly. But he was nearly _mouthing_ her ear. She could feel his scar brushing against her ear and then she was trembling for an entirely different reason. She should not…

“ _Creators_ ,” she swore when he opened his mouth to yawn, his lips dragging across her ear, catching on the edge of the lobe.

If there had been even the slightest _hint_ of teeth in that movement she might have shamed herself by throwing herself at the stupid fucking Commander who was only just managing to drive her up the fucking wall with his stupid fucking ability to _pant_ and _breathe_ and fucking _moan_ as he woke himself out of his stupor. For a moment, his arms tightened around her waist, crushing her to his chest, and he turned his head towards her, his mouth pressed into her ear, pinning it between the dry, warm, _scarred_ lips of the man she was pretty certain she despised and her head. The pressure was fucking _delicious_ though and Aurum had to grit her teeth against a moan of her own.

“Commander,” she bit out instead, trying to free her arms from where they were pinned in the fabric and his grasp.

He makes some sort of grumbling half-response and Aurum **melted** into him, part of her wanting nothing more than to feel that sound against her ear again and have it rumble through her all throughout a very long, very energetic night. She wanted to test him, bite him, push him, and be pushed, bitten and tested in return. He was her antithesis in everything, but there was a connection - there was a draw,  a pull, and Aurum did not want to think about it, nor about what Varric would say if he knew. But, no, that is _stupid_ and she shouldn’t be _thinking_ about what it would sound like if he actually moaned from pleasure instead of waking.

She had really hit her head hard to even be entertaining these ideas.

The Commander was finally roused, muttering some sort of Andrastian prayer under his breath as he realized where she was and where he was (if the Chantry said prayers like _that_ , Aurum could perhaps be convinced to convert one day) and then, with confusion evident in his every movement, pulled his head away from Aurum’s ear and cleared his throat. If he noticed that she was blushing or that her pupils were wide and consuming and that her body temperature was well above normal for elves and that she was nearly squirming with need in his _fucking lap_ , he blessedly said nothing.

Aurum was quick to look away from him. She needed to put her clothing back on and start work on getting out of this shithole of a cave. The ache in her head had subsided and she felt, interestingly enough, so much better after that little nap. She was not confident that she could do any sort of major spellwork beyond the spells she had been trained to do even in her sleeping hours, but she could at least think about magic without her migraine threatening to make her ill.

She started to pull away, and the Commander, still sleep-muddled and half-aware of where his body was in relation to hers was slow to unwrap his arms from her body. Aurum darted out of his arms as soon as she could, taking a good portion of the Commander’s excess cloth with her, wrapping it around her torso and legs to keep searching eyes from seeing what they should not.

“Sorry, Herald. I did not mean to-”

“Commander, please. I only minded the part where you were mussing with my ear. They’re sensitive and you…talk in your sleep.”

He had the decency to look confused by what she was saying, but she was already bending to her frozen clothes and working on slowly, slowly thawing them out, then evaporating the water that clung to them. When the leather was supple and more importantly, _warm_ , Aurum dressed herself, wrapping the Commander’s luxurious fur mantle over her own shoulders, to his annoyance.

“That is mine, Herald.”

“Incorrect. Mine.”

“Herald, please, they will talk if you come back wearing my things like that.”

Aurum buried her face in the warm furs she had stolen from him and gave him a coquettish bat of her eyelashes.

“Oh, _myyyyy_ , Commander, what _ever_ shall your men say about you bedding an _apostate Dalish_ _heathen_? Ooooh, shall you be _ruined_?” she mocked in a high falsetto, swaying her hips from side to side.

She laughed when his eyes dipped low to follow their movement and _this_ time he did not blush at the sound, just looked back at her and the laughter trailed off when she saw how he was looking at her. For a long moment, where her heart stuttered so it could beat in time with his, they held eye contact. Nervously, she licked the corner of her lips, and Cullen only broke eye contact with her to look down and track the movement of her tongue. Aurum was quick to turn away from him at that, trying to school her heartbeat down again.

“I will give the furs back when we are closer to camp, Commander. I would hate to have your sterling reputation ruined by the kindness you showed me. Come, I should be able to get us out of here with a few short breaks to catch my breath. You will be able to find the camp, I trust?”

He gave her an affirmative, and that was all she really needed to hear. This whole fiasco would be done with soon enough, and after the Inquisition decided what it wanted to do about Corypheus, she could go home. She could go back to the aravels and the smell of wind untouched by building or shem, she could go back and all would be as it needed to be. An army was needed to take down the magister who claimed to be a Godling, and she was no army. She was just Aurum, and that was just fine. It was not enough for what they needed, and she could leave.

The thoughts made it easier to work on digging their way out of the cave. Fire and ice gently worked together to craft a path stable enough for both of them to crawl through until sunlight broke over them, and under Cullen’s direction, they began the long walk back to the camp the Inquisition had set up.


	7. The Discussion

As she had promised, she returned his mantle she had stolen from the Commander when they drew within sight of the encampment.

The next few hours were a mad rush of people and questions that Aurum tried to answer as best she could. Her headache came back as she worked to remember what had happened in the time she had been alone with Corypheus. There were always more questions, more questions, more questions more questions more questionsmorequestionsmorequestionsmorequestions. An argument started amongst her advisors, their voices rising far louder than Aurum could handle.

Someone pulled her away from the escalating fight and led her to a cot. She made more than just token protestations, objecting strenuously to being put to bed like some little child, but then there was the scent of lavender and chamomile and _Creators_ she did not realize how tired she was until she was already halfway into the cot. Still, as a matter of principle, she growled curses at the ‘helpful’ Tevinter mage and Kirkwall dwarf.

Sleep took her and Aurum could not be happier that she did not dream this night. There was only warmth and the far-off arguing of the Council. Aurum tried to sleep for as long as she could, her body needing the time to recuperate. She had been through a lot in the past day, and now that her wounds had been tended to, Aurum needed to sleep. She needed to have a few moments away from being the Herald of Andraste, she needed to be herself, and it seemed that she could really only hope for a few hours to sleep.

Eventually, the shouting match escalated to a point where even _she_ could not ignore it in favor of sleep. The words were meaningless to her, and quite frankly, did not matter, regardless. Slowly, she sat up, only to immediately be fussed over by Mother Giselle, who came to her side to urge her to sleep again. She was almost convinced, but the argument drew her attention all over again.

Mother Giselle did her best to assure her that the argument was without any real fang behind it, but Aurum was far more bothered by the indication that she should not be involved. It was not her concern, her interference would make it worse, said the Reverend Mother who Knew Al. It did not matter! She was part of that Council and she would not be left out of the discussions that shaped the Inquisition. But Mother Giselle stalled her, stopped her from rushing in like she wanted to, and instead shuffled forward herself, singing some Chantry song that Aurum had never heard before.

And Aurum hoped to _never_ hear it again.

It was beautiful, that was not the problem. Aurum was more than happy to hear singing, she greatly enjoyed singing herself, and did like learning the new songs of the humans, dwarves, and qunari that were around her, but she did not like this song.

They sang to the glory of Dawn. The Golden Dawn. She shivered, incredibly uncomfortable as more and more and _more_ people joined in, looking to her and kneeling. They could not all know. They could not know what they were doing, or what it _meant_ to be singing what they were singing. She stood at attention, looking at everyone who was now clearly expecting something to happen. Something fantastic. But she had nothing to give them. She was more than just her name, she was. And she was not going to allow all of this to happen. She could not give them what they wanted.

She was no Herald of their God.

Aurum’s words left her, and she gave only a polite bow before trying to find an easy way to excuse herself from their attention. The Commander gave her an odd look as she edged away, and blessedly, Solas was at her side almost immediately, asking to have a word with her. Aurum had never been more relieved to see the oft-aloof mage more than she was right then. If nothing else was right, at least his ears were.

Together, they walked away from the camp, Aurum finally in some clothing a little more substantial than thin leathers so that the cold would not bother her as keenly as it had on her traipse back from Haven. The howling winds whipped around them, but neither showed any real signs of discomfort. They were both elvhen mages, there was no need to pretend as if their barriers could only stop swords and spells. Solas nearly even smiled at her at the sight. A lantern, empty and cold, stood out over a cliff, and Solas lit it with a wave of his hand as he approached ahead of her.

Aurum pretended not to notice that the flame was blue. Out of politeness. Solas’s ears twitched nearly imperceptibly at her lack of vocalization, but then he was turning to her, explaining that the orb Corypheus had born was elvhen in design, and that he feared those in the Inquisition and the rest of the world would judge their people strongly if they knew what had been done had been done with a relic from elvhen past.

She listened intently, carefully digesting everything he brought up. It was all very important for her to know, and she intended to give her very best to solve the problems that he was presenting. For the good of her People, this needed to be dealt with carefully, else more Dalish would die because of it.

“Solas, I doubt that a Tevinter magister, as one from a people well-known for stealing the history of our people, would cast any aspersions on the elvhen of today. I do…understand your concern, and I shall not flout the knowledge about, but I do not think this will be a problem for the majority of those I speak to. If this artifact is as ancient as you say it is, there is ease enough in distancing what it is being used for now, from what it was meant for then. Regardless of what it was once meant to do, it is easy enough to convince shems that there is no threat.”

He stared at her for a long while, weighing her words carefully. Aurum met his gaze with wide, beguiling eyes and waited for him to respond.

“You have an interesting way of looking at things, Aurum. I had not considered.”

“I would not know to think if you had not brought this to me. Thank you, Solas, your knowledge is, as ever, invaluable to me. Do you have any idea if any items similar to that exist? What would you suggest that we do in this situation?”

Solas blinked.

“I will consider the possible actions and inform you of what I find, but as of now, no, I do not know of any such items existing. If I find any, or the rumors of any, I will tell you.”

“Ma serannas, Solas. Was that all?”

Solas turned away from her, and Aurum took that as a dismissal. She inclined her head at his back and turned to walk back to camp. Aurum had plans to walk a more circumnambulatory path back to the Inquisition’s camp, just to have some time to herself after all the chaos. She felt like climbing a tree and sleeping there for a bit, just to reacclimate herself to being outside and safe.

“Aurum. Back at Haven…”

Aurum sighed _very_ loudly, and turned back to Solas.

“I have discussed what happened at Haven until I am quite certain that I’ve relived it enough for one day, Solas-”

“You have moonlight on your skin, falon. Do not try and distract.”

Aurum looked down at her hands, her brows drawing down into an upset furrow. Thin bands of glittering blue danced across her skin. She had forgotten to put her gloves on. In the firelight, no one could have noticed, but here, lit only by the moon above them and the blue firelight…the tattoos glowed. Her ears pinned back flat against her head and she glared at Solas.

“What is your question, then,” she snapped.

“I heard you howl.”

“I got shot with an _arrow_. I screamed.”

“That was not a scream. I know the sounds of screaming. The Fade echoes with them at every battlefield. You _howled_.”

“And if I did?” Aurum growled, crossing her arms to hide her hands from him and trying to keep her voice as even as possible.

“I would want to know how you learned the voice of the Wolf.”

“Can I not howl without being beholden to the Wolf?”

“Your… _markings_ say otherwise,” Solas said with a pointed look to where she was hiding her hands from him.

“My tattoos are really none of your business, now are they?”

No voice was raised, no tempo changed. To a listener, this was a perfectly calm conversation. To someone observing, it was clear that there was a deep current of anger beneath the surface.

“They are. You cannot be who you say you are and bear those marks. Not according to the ways the Dalish follow.”

Aurum laughed, throwing her head back. Solas came close to flinching, but suppressed the movement.

“I am the First of Clan Lavellan, whose traditions dedicate their Keepers twice, in order to maintain the knowledge of all Gods. I chose my vallaslin. The other dedication was chosen for me, and I chose to wear the markings to remember.”

“Your Clan...pays respect to the Wolf?”

“More clans should. But yes. Lavellan is small for many reasons. One of which is that we attempt to maintain a relationship with the memory of the Wolf as well as the other Gods. He may walk apart, but the Dalish do the same, regardless. It does our ancestors no glory if we ignore one of the pantheon they respected.”

Solas blinked.

“You promised yourself to the Dread Wolf.”

“I did no such thing. I wear his skin, and remember his tales with fondness, and as such, I found it appropriate to…respect him, in a way that others would prefer not to. It reminds me of what I must do.”

“That is a promise to the Dread Wolf.”

“Of sorts. I wear Andruil’s promise as well. Does that change anything?”

“No, of course it doesn’t, I was…I thank you for your honesty. I did not mean to pry.”

Aurum inclined her head.

“Thank you for being understanding. I…don’t like talking about it. Especially knowing that there is a Templar in our midst. I would…I would talk more at length were we not in such close quarters, but until we have a place where there is some manner of privacy, I do not feel comfortable in discussing it.”

“Ah, that neatly brings me to the next thing I wished to speak to you of. There is a place in the north…”

* * *

Days passed. They reached Skyhold, they settled in Skyhold, (she had been made _Inquisitor_ in Skyhold) and all things were well and good (except that last part, really). Solas blushed to the very tips of his ears when Aurum cornered him in his fresco’d study and asked him when he had found Tarasyl’an. He had hemmed and hawed and tugged the tip of his left ear until she had backed him up against the fresco with the wolves, her magic crackling around her. Solas had _smiled_ , broad and beguiling when she had pressed a hand to the wolf’s snout that hovered over his shoulder.

He had said it had something to do with his studies and that it was hard to explain the Fade to her, even if she had walked in it physically. She pushed the topic, and he, with almost a _smile_ said that they could continue the talks somewhere more interesting.

The talk had indeed been interesting. They had walked around a restored Haven, talking of the Fade and what Solas did in order to study the way he did. She had enjoyed the walk, the talking, the history of his work, and told him as much. He took it all in stride, smiling and talking to her more than she remembered ever talking with him before. Glowing praise poured out of his mouth and she found herself nearly ducking her head in embarrassment.

“You talk like I did something astounding. I just flailed my arm and magic happened. You had to hold me steady that first time, Solas.”

“Yes, but with you…that moment? I felt the whole world change.”

Aurum tensed and looked up at the taller mage, her eyebrows high and eyes wide. For a heartbeat, Solas looked at her, as if he was holding his breath, waiting for her to _do_ something, _say_ something, but Aurum was out of words. She could find nothing to say to that.

“Those are…mighty words, Solas.”

He smiled, deflected her non-response, and went on talking, eventually gently calling her to wake up, and she did -sitting up in the new bed the Inquisitor had been given. Confused, and wary, Aurum turned onto her side, re-settled her blankets and went back to sleep.

She did her best to forget how Solas had looked at her in the days that followed. The Fade did not distort as much as he, perhaps, thought it did. She had seen, for the moment, heat and hunger in him, and it unnerved her to be so easily considered prey.

* * *

“My Lady Inquisitor!”

Aurum let out a sigh that was half-growl, and turned her head to the approaching page, tearing her attention away from the spell she was trying to work through with Dorian’s aide. This was the first time in _weeks_ that she had had any time to herself and with the worries piling up on her shoulders about her Clan’s activities in Wycome, and the upcoming Ball at the Winter Palace, and Vivienne, the newest mage she had gathered constantly being on her case about the Ball (Darling do this, Darling do that, Darling please you must learn about court appearances, Darling please you will have to act this way and you cannot do that when we are _there_ ) and the thousands of other things that always seemed to need the Inquisitor’s attention, she had needed a distraction. The Tevinter mage was good at being…distracting, with a careful jibe or otherwise carefully crafted flirtation that she knew he did not mean.

It was good to have this distraction, especially when she kept catching the Commander glowering at her from across the war table, or as she crossed the courtyard with her favored companions in tow, or when she ordered him and his men out to do their jobs or…well Aurum could hardly remember a time when the Commander was _not_ glowering in her general direction whenever they were in the same room.

“Commander Cullen wishes to see you in the War Room to discuss the-”

“Inform the Commander that I am _busy_ and that he can wait on my arrival, or fuck off and find someone else to bother,” Aurum snapped, her magic rumbling ominously around her fingers.

The page swallowed loudly, clearly not wanting the unenviable task of telling the War Commander to ‘fuck off’.

Dorian chuckled, watching her carefully. Mages that could so easily twist the fade were not necessarily rare in Tevinter, but rarely did they hold their power so easily. Aurum made mincemeat of his preconceived notions, and Dorian was more than confident that she was both still holding back, and fully capable of destroying everyone’s notions of what it meant to be a Dalish mage if she was not so good at hiding what she could do. Aurum sighed and turned away from the trembling page, looking back to her magic-work.

“You may paraphrase as best you see fit,” she conceded, after a long moment.

"Of course, your Worship!"

Dorian grinned at the book he was reading as he supervised her work on a Tevinter spell. The page bowed low and scampered away. Later, she would go back to teaching him one of the Dalish spells she was so proud of, and that he had no true talent for yet. They had found an out-of-the-way courtyard to practice in, away from the prying eyes of the general public who would be made nervous by what they were doing.

“Hands up, Dalish. Do it again. Remember, you’re focusing on _controlling_ the magic. Maybe one day you’ll be able to pass for a half able mage.”

Dalish magic was far more organic, an upwelling of what was already in the area, focused and channeled as little as possible, to maintain it as a force of nature. The Elvhen had a long memory, and her legends told her about when magic could move mountains. It always started with something as small and as insignificant as making a creek flow upstream instead of down, but it ended with the very core of Thedas trembling. Tevinter magic was steeped in history and chaos but it was still difficult to wrap her head around.

Aurum shook her head and went back to work. After she had the basics of this spell down and wiped that damned smirk off of Dorian’s face she could feel like she had really done something. He was so _certain_ she would not manage this? Please.

* * *

It was late, late in the night when she and Dorian were done practicing. Her fingers buzzed with magic. She had managed the spell, casting it awkwardly as she tried to mimic his stance and posture but not quite managing to get the magic to _flow_ like she was used to. The spell was still effective, but it left an odd residue, of sorts, on her fingers.

Shaking her hands out, she ambled towards the War Room. She was not going to call the Council this late, but she wanted to see the reports that had come in during her blessedly enjoyable break with Dorian. She had mage lights streaming around her head, illuminating her path with pale green and doing little to disguise who she was. Humming a Dalish tune under her breath as she picked her way over the rubble in the hallway, Aurum was still in a muzzy haze of happiness when she opened the door to the War Room.

She lifted her eyes to the table and was shocked to see the Commander stooped over a candle that had long since burned low. He was staring at the table, and all the markers, every inch of him radiating anger. This table was easily twice the size of the old one, allowing for more precise marking, and knife-stabbing. Aurum should really talk to Cassandra about her propensity for stabbing tables. It was probably unhealthy.

Aurum momentarily considered turning and leaving the room, but the pale glow of her light had caught the Commander’s attention and he looked up at her, frowning, first at her, and then at the streamers of light that wove through the air.

“Abelas, Commander, I’m sorry for disturbing you. I did not expect you to be awake this late.”

“Your message said to await you at your leisure, or did you forget that?”

Aurum’s ear’s flicked irritably, and she saw his eyes dart up to them to track the movement. She had been trying to be nice. She had been in _such_ a good mood.

“My message was not conveyed exactly. The page was too nervous to tell you to fuck off _or_ wait for me, and must not have translated my wish correctly. Apologies, again, Commander. I shall take my leave. You seem…busy.”

“I stayed to talk with you, and I will talk with you **now** , Inquisitor.”

Aurum sighed and waved the lights brighter and larger so that the dark room was illuminated completely in the pale, soothing green. The Commander looked positively apoplectic at the casual use of magic, but did not say anything about it. He just watched her carefully as she walked towards the table, his gaze intense and entirely unreadable.

“There have been reports that you have been practicing magic with Dorian Pavus, most recently by that page you sent back to me.”

"Those reports are entirely true. He uses magic differently than I do and I want to learn. I was planning on asking Solas and Vivienne to teach me what they know after Dorian and I have spent some more time working together. I like learning, and their magic is different than mine. It helps me understand them to understand how their magic works for them. So I learn and adapt their spells to work for me.”

His eyes went wide. Aurum could only think that he was not expecting her to ‘confess’ so readily to the tragic crime of…practicing a new form of magic? Were the Circles really so closed as to not allow even that much for their mages? Aurum was more and more glad that the Templars had never managed to find her for a second time. That life would have killed her. All that curiosity and no way to slake it? The very thought made her skin crawl.

“Y…you’re _serious?!_ You could endanger us all doing that! You don’t know how your magic will react, you don’t know what could happen, you could hurt yourself or Dorian or anyone who managed to walk in at the wrong time!”

He circled the table, walking towards the door as he spoke, and then turning on her remarkably fast. The Commander advanced on her not unlike a predator stalking prey, and Aurum knew herself to be at the disadvantage. He had a weapon, he had not been practicing magic to the point of near exhaustion, and he was wearing armor. He drew close, and she backed away, focusing intently to make sure she did not misstep and end up in the range of a Templar’s nullification field. Unfortunately, the back of her leg hit the War Table far before she had managed to escape.

He pinned her in, both of his hands grabbing the table on either side of her hips.

“If the mages see you and Dorian cavorting around like you are, they might get ideas-”

“And **_what_** , Commander? Are you so afraid of us that you would keep us from _thinking_?!”

Aurum leaned up into him, her face mere inches from his as her temper flared. Above their heads, her mage-lights spun dangerously.

“Magic is dangerous!” he snarled, snapping his face towards hers.

She could feel when the Templar’s power began to reach to consume her own. She was well trained in that particular sensation and knew that she had pushed a sore point. But she was too incensed to have the good sense to back away, or stand down. Aurum was walking a thin line, and she did not know what lay on either side of it. But she was not going to stand for this. Not tonight.

“Magic is only dangerous if you _force_ it to be by making those who wield it, _afraid_ of it! Magic is beauty and glory and _power_ and you would have it locked away out of fear! You drive them to madness, seeking answers you will not let them have ,and then punishing them for looking! You would steal the lives of children from their families, you would snuff out lineages before they could be formed, deny the Mages freedom all to feel safer from the very problems you made be when you sleep! Coward!”

The tight coil of power in the Commander broke and she could only gasp as she felt her magic _forced_ away from her and locked down inside. The lights above them flashed out all at once and before she could growl her objection, his hands were on her hips, and he was pushing her back onto the table. Her hand was on his throat, tightening enough to be a threat, but not so much to be actually painful.

It was a toothless threat. Without her magic, all she could hope to do was choke him, and he had no particular worries that he was not strong enough to pull her hand away.

His lip curled upwards, her gaze dropped to his lips and the way the scar _moved_ with the movement. She mirrored his sneer, his molten gold eyes dipped to the way _her_ mouth moved and then they were biting at each other's lips, passion dictating their need for physical contact. They burned for this, and anger was so easily turned to lust. 

He pushed her up onto the table and wedged himself in between her legs so he could maintain closeness and control. His hands grabbed at her hips, pulling her flush against him and his armor, uncaring for how cruelly it bit into her. Aurum bit his lip until she tasted blood and he was muttering something about Andraste’s tits and trying to lick at the wound she gave him. She reached out to grab him by the hairs on the back of his head and force him closer so she could taste his tongue’s texture against her own. His blood spotted their kiss, tiny tastes of copper and flashes of pain as he sought to return the fevered favor. She pushed harder against him, wanting more and impatient to have it. Aurum pulled him tighter to him, wrapping her legs around his waist and trying to get him to move against her.

The Commander made a _sound_ at that, broken and needy and so fucking _deep_ in his chest that Aurum was caught off guard when he pushed her backwards, bracing himself with one arm on the table (knocking over some of the markers for the operations happening in the Emerald Graves) and the other stayed wrapped around her so that he could pull her up against him. He made the same sound, or at least a cousin to that sound at every one of her tugs of his hair. Aurum had to swallow a response in her own throat as he kissed her harder, their teeth clicking together as he inexpertly parried her advances with his own. 

His armor dug painfully into her skin, a reminder that he still had the upper hand, and Aurum just hated that. She hated it enough to pull his head back, away from their torrid kiss and wedge her face back into his neck so she could bite him there instead. Not enough to blood him, just to bruise, and the Commander wilted into her with a breathless " _Yes_ ", nearly with enough force to push her flat against the table. She only just barely managed to catch herself on her elbow, but the Commander’s hands were still roaming and his mouth was still making those sounds. She turned her head, just the slightest bit and the stubble across his neck and chin rasped against her ear.

Aurum could not stop the shocked, the _pleased_ gasp that escaped her mouth, and regretted that immediately. The hand that was not holding the Commander’s weight immediately came up to caress the shell of her ear, tugging on the very tip, and then scratching lightly down the lobe as he growled something she could not catch under his breath. She froze against him, trying to fight the moan that wanted to tumble out of her mouth. He was going to have none of that, maneuvering so that he could press his mouth against her ear and hiss filthy curses at her. 

His words were dark ones, full of need and desire, and he did not stop them, not the once, not even as he kissed her ear. He poured sin against her skin, like he was trying to bleed it out of him into her, like he was trying to paint her flesh with sin he held in his chest. Cullen drew away for the barest moment, catching himself in the middle of a lurid description of what, exactly, he wanted to do to the _Inquisitor_ of all people, but Aurum was gasping at him, pulling him closer, urging _more_ from him with a panted " _please!_ " because this was everything she could have ever loathed herself enough to want.

When he swept back in, he pressed his lips against her ear before opening his mouth to bite at the very tip of her ear. Aurum’s shocked gasp fell into a long moan, and she arched against him wantonly, seeking the friction of his cock against her. The clothes were a hindrance, but that made this the more salacious. Cullen growled at her, moaning when she locked his hips against her with her legs. He would not get away from her, or the way she was undulating her hips against his. She wanted - she _ached_ to feel him there, and every one of his ever-bolder movements had Aurum more and more prepared to have him take her. She had abandoned her assault on his neck, content enough with the bruises she had already left there, and was now luxuriating under the attentive ministrations being paid to her ear. His mouth – his lips – his _tongue_ – if he would just - the armor was in the way - the scar felt - he felt - she felt

“Creators, Com-” she started, her head lolling to the side, presenting the entirety of the side of her neck to him.

Submission. She offered him her submission because the taboo, the wrongness of it, made her want it. Because she wanted him. Because his stupid fucking scar drove her up the wall and everything about him was so wrong it cycled back to being _right_. 

“Commander Cullen, I could not find you in your office, I have a report from Sister Leliana that you had wanted to see!”

He froze against her, and reality crashed over them both. The Commander looked at her, at them, at where his hands were and felt the pain from where she had bit him, now that it had lost its fevered erotic feel. Cullen jumped back like she was fire incarnate. His hands could not be anywhere near her. Not anymore. He turned to the door to answer it, not certain he even could with the majority of the blood in his body…not…exactly anywhere that was helpful, but if he did not, something would be known to be amiss.

There was a brief flash of light, a whisper of wind, and when he turned back to where the Inquisitor had been there was nothing. Only an open window and an empty room. She had made her escape. Hastily he tried to adjust himself, ignoring the flash of pleasure that flushed him when he…touched himself, and trying to make himself look presentable and less like he had just been – ugh, he could not even think about it. The Inquisitor was going to _kill_ him, he was certain. If she did not, the Maker certainly would. He licked his own blood off his lips, and then wiped his chin to make sure that there was nothing obvious left behind. The lack of candlelight would be a blessing in this one instance

He barked the affirmative to enter to the patiently-waiting page and did his best to keep his voice level and commanding (and his body angled so the page could not see the bruises that stippled the side of his neck) so that he could handle this problem.

He would just have to talk to the Inquisitor in the morning, and in the mean time, pray to Andraste and the Maker both to deliver him from the temptation the Inquisitor presented. This was just too much.


	8. The Story

Aurum neatly avoided him for the next few days. The War Room was hardly used. Everyone had their tasks, and Aurum was _c_ areful to send missives to Cullen only when she was certain he was busy with something else and unavailable to come. He was a smart man, and obviously noticed this, but Aurum was not exactly feeling like she wanted to explain herself right then to him.

Aurum also avoided thinking about what had happened. Because even the most idle of thoughts about how the shem’s fucking scruffy half-beard had rasped her ear made her tremble. And then hate the fact that she trembled. And then remember what had happened the last time she had hated him so acutely and his scar had been pressed to her lips and it did not even matter that he was inexperienced because he was –

“ _Ugh_ ,” she grunted, dropping her head down to the warm wood of her desk. In her personal quarters, no one could hear her growling her frustrations out over the paperwork she needed to get done.

The ball at the Winter Palace was drawing every closer and she wanted to have everything possible already ready. That involved hours pouring over old contracts and treaties, trying to weasel more information out of them than there actually was. Vivienne was both a help and hindrance in this case, constantly being almost helpful, and then spoiling it by chastising her for using her magic the way Aurum used it. It, apparently, just was not proper, _darling_.

Vivienne was wonderful, but the woman got on Aurum’s nerves like no one else did. It was so _easy_ for everyone to assume the little Dalish girl did not know anything about The Game. Please. She was the First of her Clan. Shems had no idea what that meant.

Her other companions were actual pleasures to be around, and as soon as she was done with this paperwork, Aurum had plans to head down to the tavern to drink with Dorian, Bull and Varric. Between the three of them, there wasn’t anything that could keep her mood dour. Between the outrageous stories of valor, and sex and whatever else the four of them could come up with together, Aurum usually left the tavern in much better spirits than when she arrived.

A few more signatures, a seal there, an approval there, and Aurum decided that she had now, officially, done enough to warrant her leaving her room.

She bypassed the pale tan clothing that she had been given to wear in favor of wearing some loose fitting deep green trousers and a warm, dark, dark blue tunic that she belted with a multi-corded leather thong. The tunic did not fit her over-well, gaping a bit too much at her throat for modesty’s sake, but it was better than the stupid pale tan leathers. She quickly braided her hair from the crown of her head down to keep her hair out of her eyes, and when she looked herself over in the brass mirror, she sighed. She’d need to shave the sides of her head soon…the hair was starting to look peach-fuzzy and she preferred it to be just a few millimeters shorter than it was.

Sighing, she scruffed her fingers over her fuzz-length hair and turned to leave. Aurum vastly preferred to walk barefoot through Skyhold. It was still a sacred place and so if she did not _need_ to wear shoes, or boots, she just would not. No one questioned Solas on that matter, but everyone cast her odd glances whenever she indulged in it.

It did not bother her, but Josephine would look scandalized and chide her if one of the ambassadors brought it up. Aurum was tired of being forced into a pretty box for the sake of the advisors though. She was Dalish. She was a mage. She worshiped the Creators. She did magic the way she thought it should be done. And then, yes, on top of that, she was the Inquisitor. The Herald of Andraste.

“ ** _Ugh_** ,” she growled again, showing her teeth at her own reflection and wishing that she could do the same at every simpering ambassador that came calling at her heels to whine for attention.

Aurum turned to her door, reaching for the handle, only to be startled when a knock came almost simultaneously to her opening the door. To be fair, the person on the other side jumped as well, muttering a quick “Maker’s _breath_ ” under his own before looking up to Aurum.

“Commander. What brings you to my room so late?” she bit out, trying to keep her voice from sounding as irritating as she truly was.

With a sly, vicious, _pleased_ glance, she saw that he had not managed to hide the bruises on the side of his neck well enough for them to be wholly invisible. A sick twist of _heat_ rushed through her at the sight of the slightly purpled spot on his lips where she had bit him. Her mark. His skin. The appearance of possession was enough to make dark thoughts bubble up in the back of her mind again.

“I had been trying to contact you all day today and the past few days but it never seemed as if our schedules were allowing for it, and I had-”

Of course he had to ruin her revelry by trying to be professional. Fucking shem.

“So…you just invite yourself up to my quarters, late at night? What was it that you wanted, to come to me now, of all times?”

He blinked, looking from her, to the room behind her, then down at what she was wearing and then back up to her.

“My apologies, I did not know you were…I did not mean to intrude. I just had wanted to discuss the -”

“Commander, please, can it wait? I was going to meet with my companions down at the tavern and do not want to be tardy. The Iron Bull will drink all of my mead before he even thinks to start on the ale I had brought in for him and it is hard to find any brewery that makes a Dalish mead, let alone one that will deliver it all the way out here. Varric will have eaten all the sweetbread, too.”

She sighed at the thought. Mead and sweetbread were maybe the two things she would never, ever, _ever_ say no to eating and drinking. She had a sweet tooth as wide as the Frostback mountains and had no shame in admitting that. Sweet things had been such a rarity that the thought of Bull and Varric eating _her_ food nearly made her whine and stomp her foot with impatience. She settled on crossing her arms and staring up at him.

He stammered a reply and Aurum ignored it, waving his concern away with her hand. She just wanted to get to the tavern, get just barely drunk and relax with her companions. The ball was coming soon and she had so much to do. She just wanted one night where she could pretend like she was not the Inquisitor and just enjoy the time she had with her motley crew. No answer seemed forthcoming, so Aurum stepped around Cullen and made to leave.

The Commander’s hand grabbed her arm, and he pulled her back towards him.

“Inquisitor this is imp-”

“My _name_ is Aurum. Not ‘mage’. Not ‘Herald’. Not ‘Inquisitor’. _Aurum._ ” she snapped irritably, wrenching her arm out of his grasp. She did not want him touching her. Not after what had happened the last time there had been contact between the two of them.

Her temper was rising, regardless, and she was half-certain that his was too. How dare he touch her?

“Of _course_ I know your name, Inquisitor, but I’m trying to give you the respect your title demands-”

“Yes, because Maker forbid the shemlen respect the knife-ear without having a _need_ to do so. So sorry to have been the only survivor of the Conclave’s disaster. Excuse me, Commander.”

She turned away, and he grabbed her again. Aurum tried to pull her arm away again, but her footing was off and her heel caught one of the many piles of rubble that still littered the hallways of Skyhold. She fell backwards, and her head cracked hard against the stone and - unwanted, unbidden, un _needed_ , memories flash like a kaleidoscope as Cullen reached for her again.

 _Templar, harel, **Templar** , mamae, sword, danger, danger danger danger DANGER **DANGER**_.

“Templar! No! **DON’T TOUCH ME!** ”

Her magic, her protector and her power as it had been since the day she came into it, roared, blistering the air around her with fire and lightning, driving the Commander away from her. She lifted a hand, a warding gesture given over to threat when fire curled around her, outlining the rune-circle of the next spell. Her eyes were wide, but her pupils had constricted to mere pinpricks against her iris. For a long second, Aurum was still, her hand outstretched and her gaze unblinking. She did not even breathe, just stared, waiting for _something_ to happen.

He gaped at her, understanding dawning in his eyes.

“Oh, _Maker_ I-”

She was gone, turning on her heel and bolting for the safety of the outdoors. Faster than a fleeing halla, she darted away, with no hope for the Commander to rush after her. Dread flooded him and he gave chase regardless, trying to at least see where her path went to try and send some of her companions out after her if she had run away, but it was as if she had vanished completely. There was no sign of her, no slamming door, no titter in the crowd of gathered dignitaries. In fact, his sudden flustered appearance drew more shocked gasps and stares than anything she could have done.

He swallowed his concern, nodded in apology to the ladies he had scandalized and did his best to appear as if he was _not_ hurrying to the tavern. She was to meet some of the others there, and he could only hope she would keep that appointment with them.

* * *

Dorian was the first to recover after his hurried explanation in the Tavern, his eyes narrowed just enough to give him an unkind look. The others around them did not seem to think much higher of Cullen in that moment, either.

“Allow me to ensure I understand what happened, here, Commander: You wished to talk with Aurum. So you went to her room, only to find that she was leaving to come meet us. The two of you had an argument, so your response was to grab at her and it ended with her hitting her head.”

“You, the Templar. And a mage who lived her entire life in fear of what your people could do to her,” Varric added. Dorian nodded, and Bull was just…staring at him.

“Yes and I had not had the chance to apologize. I did not mean to frighten her-”

“Commander, if you had _frightened_ her, you would have died. You did more than just spook her. IShe’s gone toe-to-toe with things bigger than our favorite Qunari there and never once quailed. You remember when she took that sword to her side? Didn't even flinch. Not even when there were demons coming out of the fade, after her.”

“Then what-”

“…Mamae, mamae, no, please mamae wake up. Mamae they are coming back, the men with the swords and I am cold and afraid mamae. Mamae please, I can’t find your staff. Mamae, please wake up there’s so much blood mamae. My eye hurts mamae.”

Cole’s voice broke the argument, and he spoke in the soft, disjointed way he did when he read thoughts.

“Templar, she knows the word in the language of the shemlen. She had only heard stories, but her mamae said the Templars were coming. They ran, they ran so far, and she wanted to stop. Mamae looked at her. “Da’len”, she said. “Ma emm’asha, ma’arlath, da’mi, da’assan.” Mamae’s magic could not stop the swords. Mamae’s magic could not win against the magic the Templars had. Mamae told her to run but she couldn’t. One of them hit her, and she fell into the snow. Cold, it is so cold. Mamae, please wake up they are _hurting_ me. Mamae please. Don’t touch my mamae, don’t touch her, don’t _touch her!_ ”

The half-spirit cocked his head to one side, the wide brim of his hat brushing his shoulder. His eyes turned to Cullen, and the Commander flinched.

“The lion does not frighten her. He reminds her. Her magic came too late. Too late for mamae. Too late to save her. He is the same as them. She wishes he was not.”

Silence dominated their table, and Cole met the gazes of everyone there evenly.

“Kid, that was not your story to tell,” Bull said softly, his voice low.

“The Iron Bull, did I do it wrong? You are all wanting to know why she did that. It will help her for others to know.”

The qunari sighed, and stood to guide Cole away, leaving the Commander standing awkwardly in front of Dorian and Varric, who were glaring at him anew. Almost in perfect concert they flicked their gaze to something - someone - behind him and their stares changed from hatred to something else entirely. He did not think that he had deserved those glares in the beginning, but now he felt rather like he did –

“Cole…was just here, wasn’t he?”

Aurum’s voice came from behind him, and Cullen turned quickly to look at her. Her eyes did not even tick to glance in his direction. Varric nodded, and she sighed, looking away.

“Well that is wonderful. I suppose I owed you all a story, regardless. Please tell me you didn’t eat all the sweetbread, Varric.”

Her tone was uncommonly flat as she spoke, and she moved to sit where Bull had just been. Varric presented her with a plate of sweetbread and then Bull was back, pressing a huge mug of mead into her hand. Aurum took it without a second thought and drained it all at once before smacking Bull in the stomach with the now empty flagon.

“I don’t tell this story without more mead.”

There was a dry laugh from someone and her response was to make a very rude hand gesture. She turned to him, her eyes half-focused and not quite meeting his own.

“You might as well sit, Commander.”

He swallowed hard, but complied. This was not the Aurum he was used to hearing. The sharp command in her voice was gone, as was the teasing cadence and the bright tone. Her voice was flat. Lifeless.

* * *

“And so begins the tale of Aurum, First of Clan Lavellan,” she mumbled, her head resting on the table. The Commander had cleared just about everyone out with a command, leaving the Inquisitor to drink in peace.

A few of the other Companions had trickled in after hearing what had happened, and Aurum did not show any real signs of recognizing that there was even one person in the room. She was intent upon not looking at anyone, and only lifted her head from the scarred wood of the table to eat or drink.

“I was born to an elvhen woman in an alienage. She named me in the way elves of old did: after the first thing she had seen upon holding me in her arms for the first time – the light of the dawn breaking over the horizon. She had left her Clan, and her position within the Clan as the Second to be with her lethallin, who wished to be a part of the city. She taught me the way of the Dalish, and refused to let anyone call me flat-ear. I was knife-ear and nothing less. The city was small, and rarely ever was the Chantry even used. No one much cared what she was, or who she was. It was not until we saw one of the Revered Mothers come in and expel the woman who had been in charge of the Chantry that she thought she would ever turn back home again.

“But if the Chantry was being used properly soon, as this new Mother kept proclaiming, she knew that meant that there would soon be Templars come to protect the Chantry from the inordinate number of heathens in the area. The town was near one of the trading routes for the Dalish. Close enough that some of the more companionable Clans would often trade and share stories with my mother and I. A Templar would know her for what she was and would either kill the apostate mage hiding in plain sight, or take her to the Circle to be held there.

“That was her fear. Separation. Her lethallin would not – could not leave. So she made plans in secret. She would not be taken to the Circle and made into something she was not. She took me with her. She had to. I was her daughter, a member of a bloodline long reaching back to the days of our Empire. She knew what I could be. I was…young. But I went with her.

“We met the Templars on the road.

“She had done what she could to mask her magic, but these men knew what they were looking for. They knew she was a mage and when they confronted her, she tried to escape. I could not run for long, and she could either hold her staff or me. She chose me, leaving her only weapon behind as she ran for the trees. She sang as she ran, trying to calm me as we were pursued. I was young. I did not understand. I distracted her. She was hit with an arrow in the leg. She fell. I fell. The Templars closed in around her. She had no magic, not with that many Templars trying to suppress her. She had her knife. She killed two before a sword cut her belly open. There was…a lot of blood. On the snow.

“She fought on, holding a hand against the wound. She maimed a third, but he grabbed her hand and broke her arm. The last one grabbed me instead of her. She could only try and fight, but his knife was already cutting my face and I was screaming for her to make him stop.

“They slit her throat while she was trying to calm me down. I was crying, then, too young to know how to keep pain inside and she called…”

Aurum kept her head down as she spoke, muttering her story into the table. Keeper Istimaethoriel would have had her ears if she had seen how poorly she was telling this story. She did not weep. Life was pain. She noted Varric looking to the scars that traced around her eye with new understanding. She shook her head and continued the story.

“Dalish hunters had heard my crying and came to investigate. There were bodies of dead Templars everywhere, and I was caterwauling at her body, begging her to come back. I was cold and hungry and I didn’t understand. I **couldn’t** understand what had happened.

“The hunters wanted to know how I had managed to survive both a winter’s night and the attack. The Templars had been decimated, and there was blood everywhere.”

Now, she did look up, meeting the Commander’s eyes with a gaze that held more fire than ice, even with how cold the story was. There was darkness in her gaze, a yawning, howling _rage_ that boiled under her skin. He held her stare, and tried to deny the nervousness that rose up in his gut.

It seemed like the entirety of the assembled were holding their breath, waiting for whatever was coming next.

“I came into my magic _very_ early.”

Her head went back down, and, with a single finger, she nudged her again-empty flagon back towards Bull. He took the hint and got up.

There was silence.

“I should go,” the Commander said as he rose, drawing attention he did not want on him.

“Yes. You should. Dareth shiral, Commander Cullen. May the Dread Wolf not hear your footsteps.”


	9. The Apology

Early the next morning, the Commander was roused from his pre-dawn battle with paperwork by a knock at the main door to his study. His room was up a ladder under a roof that would, eventually, be fixed. But the knock…that was unexpected. Most of the pages and soldiers did not bother him until a few hours after the sun had been up. He was still upset over the previous night. His actions had been unbecoming for a Commander of the Inquisition and then to hear _why_ Aurum seemed so easily goaded into snarling at him had only made his actions pain him the more.

Grumpily, he opened the door, a half-formed gruff command to “leave him the hells along in the morning, dammit” on his lips.

Aurum, her hair mussed out of the neat braids he was so used to seeing, and her eyes bleary with sleep, was standing at the door, holding a tray laden with still-steaming food. There was a kettle and a wild assortment of dried and fresh herbs off to the side, next to a large, empty mug.

He honestly half expected her to throw it in his face and then make a jab at him with the butter knife, after what had happened the night before (she had hit her head enough to be dazed and forget what was happening, but not so dazed that she could not attempt a defense) but she stood very still, very awkwardly outside his door, definitely _not fidgeting_ from foot to foot.

“May I…help you, Inquisi-Aurum?”

“It was decided last night, after you had left and I had been given the chance to listen to the others, that I had been unfair to you in how I had been treating you, regardles of my own history with your Order. As I am not the Keeper of my clan, my ability to apologize is limited to apologizing to you instead of your _entire_ clan, and I do not have any idea what sort of thing sh _-eu-umans_ do for apologies, so I woke up earlier and made you breakfast instead. Abelas, Commander, I have acted inappropriately towards you and on behalf of my Clan, I apologize profusely.”

She gave an awkward bow from her waist, trying to keep her hair out of the food while still observing the proper decorum. The Commander stared.

Aurum was not looking at him, apparently finding the stonework just to the left of his door to be utterly fascinating. She…she was _blushing,_ the tips of her ears a bright burning red, and her cheeks were dusted with pink. Her mouth was screwed down into a tight line and she was not moving at all.

“Thank you, Aurum. Would you…like to come in?”

“If I am invited, yes.”

“You are invited in, please.”

He stepped away, and she shuffled in, her head low and her ears flattened back to her skull. The Commander remembered the _sound_ she had made when his stubble had rubbed across the lobe, when he had whispered unholy things at her, when he had bit it, just ever so gently… and that was not at all a fruitful way of thinking right now. She looked from him to his desk, and then back to him.

“Your desk is filthy. I’m not putting the food I just spent three hours making on top of your half-finished papers, serah.”

He watched as her ears tilted out, then flicked quickly down and back up before returning to their initial position. She smiled crookedly at him, and he realized she was…joking. She was making a joke. _Maker’s breath_ this was not going at all how he had thought it would. She was not attacking him or screaming or even making half-attempts to do either.

“Y-yes, let me just move some of the work. I was just in the middle of...I had wanted to get a head start on everything and rather lost track of time.”

Aurum said nothing, merely waited for an appropriately large area to be made clear before setting the tray down. She was careful to avoid stepping too close to him, and backed away out of his range before turning her back to him and heading towards the door.

“Aurum, I…I’m sorry for how I treated you as well. I was not fair to you, either. I cannot possibly eat this all myself, as delicious as it looks, and I’m certain you have yet to eat either. Would you care to…join me? F-for breakfast, I mean.”

She blinked. Her ears twitched, and he could not help how his eyes tracked the movement. Her ears were _always_ moving, now that he had reason to notice them, and he suddenly felt the yawning cultural gap between them. The elves he had met…or, at least, _seen_ in the Circles or in the City, their ears did not move as much as hers did, hardly twitching even as they were angry or arguing. Aurum’s seemed to constantly move, indicating how she felt and any number of other things. Once he noticed them.

“If you are inviting, then yes. I will eat with you.”

He gave her a small smile, and she returned it, the tips of her ears dipping low and then snapping back up. The movement was so small and so fast that he had to devote all of his attention to how they moved, something she noticed. Her ears went back to flat against her skull, and when he looked at her, her expression was calculating.

“I’m sorry, i-is that offensive? To stare at your ears?” he asked, fumbling for the words. She was so different from him and he desperately did not want to repeat…what had happened the night before.

“It’s just odd. Most s- _sh_ humans don’t ever look at our ears like you look at mine,” Aurum said, stuttering over the attempt to keep things polite. “I don’t understand why you’re so fascinated.”

Her left ear and only her left ear flicked outwards before returning to its resting position, neatly back against her head. The way she had shaved both sides of her head actually left him a grand view of the way her ears moved. That was certainly not the intent of her chosen hair style, and while it was very nice, he was appreciating it for entirely different reasons than what he had intended.

“Humans can’t do that with their ears, is all. Yours move a lot.

She snorted, a decidedly un-Inquisitorial sound that made him jump.

“Humans cannot do a lot of things. Wiggling your ears hardly seems like the sort of thing that should garner that much attention.”

Still, her ears danced, wiggling back and forth. He stared for a moment before looking back at her and catching her smirking at him. Cullen could not catch the laugh that bubbled out of him and ended with her laughing along with him, her own laugh matching the broken canter of his with a nearly lyrical sweetness.

“Maker, but I am sorry for how I have treated you, Aurum. I was acting as a Templar and not your Commander. It was inappropriate…especially to use the-”

“We don’t need to rehash it. I apologized, you accepted, you apologize and now I accept. There. We are now squared away and can start anew, hopefully with less of you trying to insinuate that I’m dirty demon-attracting scum, and less of me insinuating that you are perhaps the largest sentient piece of halla-shit I’ve ever had the misfortune of meeting.”

She spoke to the leg of his desk, one of her ears drawing a lazy circle in the air, an eyebrow arched and a smile hovering around the corner of her lips. She was mocking him still – a well intentioned jab, but one without any real anger behind it. He watched her relax when he huffed a laugh, the steel melting from her spine, giving her a liquid grace as she moved towards the tray of food she had brought.

Not that she had not _always_ been graceful when she moved, but this was different. The grace he had seen in her earlier had been the grace of…of a sword, held tight and at attention. Deadly. This grace was the grace of water rushing through a creek-bed, of fire curling around a log. Deadly, still, but decidedly less threatening. She was making an attempt at being friendly. Well, at least she was not trying to light his hair on fire with her mind, which was something he was almost certain she had thought of before if the little snippets of conversation Cole would occasionally blurt out whenever had Aurum stormed past him.

“Well. Thank you for that much, Lady Aurum. I endeavor not to be such.”

She laughed, and shook her head.

“We’ll see how we manage to not step on toes, then, Serah Cullen.”

Aurum stood with her hands behind her back, looking incredibly relaxed and at ease, but not moving towards the food at all. Flour dusted the collar of her tunic, and he reached out to brush one of the larger clumps from her shoulder. She froze, looking at his hand, and then back to him. But she remained still, allowing the brief contact without any fuss.

She did not reach for the food until Cullen had taken one of the pastries, and then she only took one, eating daintily, while standing. He stared at her as she ate, and Aurum politely averted her gaze from him.

“Aurum, would you mind if I asked you a few questions?” he offered to the silence that pervaded the room.

“I would not be standing here if I did.”

“Ah, ah yes. Right.”

She hummed at him, her gaze back on the floor, and her ears twitching to the left, and then the right in rapid order.

“What did you want to know?”

* * *

“So, you... _chose_ to leave your family? To become a Templar?” she asked, her brows furrowed. Aurum just couldn't comprehend it.

They had been talking for a while at this point, the sun starting to rise higher and Skyhold waking up around them. But still, the conversation carried on.

“It was what I wanted to do, and they supported my choice.”

“I can’t imagine…was it hard? To leave?”

“It was, but I was so excited. I had wanted to be a Templar from the first moment I heard about the order, and as a child…and I believed in what they were doing.”

Aurum made a soft sound under her breath and steepeled her fingers for a moment before dipping her head to lick a dot of jam off of her finger. She did not say anything for a long, long while, leaving the Commander to start clearing the food off of his desk so he could get back to work.

“And now? Do you believe the Templars did the right thing, abandoning the Chantry and, eventually, joining Corypheus?”

“No. I left the order before this, and... I wanted to think they were doing the right thing. But joining Corypheus…I don’t understand it.”

“When you say, “Left the order”, what does that mean? I did not think the Templars just let the people they trained just amble away.”

He looked up at her. She did not blink.

He sighed, and reached down to a hidden drawer in his desk to pull out a small wooden box. His fingers were familiar with the curve of its lock and it opened easily. Aurum maintained her distance, looking between the box and what it held (a vial with magic around it, some measuring tools and a spoon?) and the Commander.

“As the Inquisitor, I...you should know. Lyrium grants the Templars our – _their_ abilities, but it controls us as well, an addiction that drives them to stay with the Order, and obey orders given. If a Templar is without it, it drives them mad, and can kill them. We have a reliable source of lyrium for the Templars in the Inqusition but I…no longer take it.”

He looked up at her. She stared at him, her brows drawing down in confusion.

“You stopped taking the thing that makes you a Templar?”

That made the “I’m not a Templar anymore” spiel much more believable. Aurum hid her embarrassment with a quick glance out the window to see how high the sun was. She needed to have a way to get out of this if things got sticky for her, and she could always use Dorian for an excuse if she needed to. She had judged the Commander…she had judged _Cullen_ unfairly. That was not a common experience for her.

“When I joined the Inquisition, yes.”

“That was months ago.”

“Yes.”

“You put yourself in danger for the Inquisition, without knowing more of it and what it would be come, why?”

“After what happened in Kirkwall, I couldn’t. I will not be bound to the Order – or that life – any longer. Whatever the suffering, I accept it.”

Her ears were pinned back flat against her head, but he could tell that it was not with anger, not this time. The tips of her ear were low, and she was not looking at him. But she said nothing.

“But I would not put the Inquisition at risk. I have asked Cassandra to watch me. If my ability to lead is compromised, I will be relieved from duty,” Cullen quickly added, trying to understand where her unease was coming from and end it.

“While I…respect what you are doing, and understand why you chose this as best I can…I ask that you tell me if you begin to experience any of the symptoms that come from your choice. I do not like the thought of you in pain, and while you may mistrust my magic, you would not be the first I have helped through a withdrawal. Is that the lyrium, then?”

She nodded towards the vial, transitioning too fast for the Commander to truly understand what she was talking about. That was on purpose, however. Aurum did not want to have to think about how bad she had fucked up for too long because shame was an uncommon feeling and it made her incredibly uncomfortable.

“Yes, it is – but what were you saying?”

Aurum picked up the vial that sang magic at her, squinting at the blue liquid inside. Slowly, she tipped the bottle back and forth, watching the early day’s light filter through the lyrium. For a long minute, she did not answer Cullen’s question, watching the light and lyrium interact. This was the root of the problem, then. This little liquid vial was all that separated men from Templars. Her anger needed somewhere to rest, and it settled on lyrium. For now, at least.

“There is a plant. It grows near a place where my Clan once camped. It is…hard to describe to someone who is not a mage. We called it Fade-flower. Very inventive, I know. A bouquet of it would be enough to turn any mage into a giggling mess for a day or three. Nonmages would get violently ill if they were exposed to it in the same way. I still don’t know why. It was hard to study the plant when all I wanted to do was watch magelights flicker across the sky and eat. There was a second variety. It looked dastardly similar, and unskilled or untrained younglings could easily make the mistake of picking the second over the former. The second variety had an addictive quality to it that the first lacked. It made mages stronger, impossibly so, but the dosage had to constantly increase or else they would feel as if they lost the sense of their connection to the Fade, and they _needed_ that dosage. Being denied turned mages into howling dervishes, and unless they had someone with them the moment the symptoms presented, they... The withdrawal killed. I watched younglings from other clans claw themselves to pieces while screaming for what they _needed_. I would…rather not see that happen again.”

She spoke to the vial, not to him. With a small sneer, she put the vial back and closed the case with a resounding _snap_.

“If you want my opinion? Burn this. Do not give yourself the chance, or a way out of this decision. You have made your choice. It is the right one. Follow through. You have a forest of companions with you. You are not alone. Do not forget that. Together, we are stronger than one.”

He stared at her.

“W-why-?”

“Cullen, I am the First of my Clan. I am meant to lead my people. I have been trained to lead. I know which plants save, and which ones hurt. I know what animals to hunt, and when, I know how to instruct the hunters in how to kill. I am a spy, a mage, a hunter, a historian, a theologian. I have spent a lifetime teaching and learning so that I may lead. I may not _like_ you, but you are a part of the Inquisition. Your life is now my responsibility, as neatly as Dorian’s or Bull’s or Le-Leliana’s,” she had to _catch_ herself when she talked about Leliana because she could still see the rage, and then the death and that was not ever going to happen, “…or anyone else who decides to join us. Their lives, your life, they all rely on me. If we were of a Clan, I would be insulted that you did not tell me you were suffering sooner, as I could have been working on something to soothe the symptoms. If we were of a Clan, I would have reminded you that not even the vallaslin ask you to endure that much.”

“…Vallaslan?”

“ _Vallaslin,”_ Aurum corrected gently, her voice curling over the word in the way only a Dalish tongue could.

"The blood writing. Our tattoos. The ones on our faces at least. You receive them when your Keeper declares you ready. After the, ah, required purifications, the Keeper begins the process of giving them to you. To cry out, to scream, to vocalize pain or to flinch indicates that you are not ready. You must endure it. It is the one time where you must be alone. All other times…vir adahlen. We are stronger together than as one.”

It was his turn to look confused as he stared at her very complex tattoos. They traced across her brow, down her nose and chin, and dotted her cheeks. The lines were purposeful and regal, and he had of course known that they were tattoos but to hear that she had not cried out during the entire process? He had seen other templars scream as they got small little tattoos of their loved ones on their arms, and that was not on a sensitive area like the face.

“All Dalish with the…vallaslin go through them without crying out?”

“Yes. Much better on the pronunciation, by the way. Very good for a human.”

“And your other tattoos? Did you get them at the same time?”

Aurum tried not to blush. She had hoped he would forget that he had seen them. She looked down to her long sleeves and gloved hands, mentally visualizing the multitude of lines that traced her body beneath her clothing.

“Those are a more private matter than my vallaslin and I would ask that you not talk of them so freely. But no, I did not flinch for those either, nor did I receive them at the same time. It was not required, but I wanted to prove to myself that I could endure that as well.”

“Do they mean anything?”

“I will forgive you the question because you do not know. Yes. They are dedications to our gods. My vallaslin is dedicated to Andruil, the Goddess of the Hunt, she who gives us Vir Tanadahl, the Way of the Three Trees. The other tattoos are…dedicated to Fen’Harel, the Dread Wolf. Trickster, who betrays all, and gives all, for a price. He is protector and traitor both. And that is all I will say on those matters.”

The Commander nodded, and swallowed his next dozen questions. She had every right to defend her practices. They stood in silence for a few moments, Aurum rubbing her hands nervously, and not meeting his gaze. He watched the small motions her ears made, and again, his mind dredged up the _sounds_ she had made when he had touched them. In the cave, she had been writhing against him just by accidental contact. In the War Room she had gasped and moaned and been stuttering on his name. She _had_ also bitten him in retaliation and left him with bruises that had his men snickering when they thought he could not see them.

“Aurum, I am sorry if this is inappropriate…but…what happened in the War Room…”

He watched her ears pin back, the tips high on her head. She looked up at him with the barest hinting of a blush on her throat. When he took a hesitant step towards her, she did not step away, leaving them closer than they had stood before. She stared at him, unflinching and unblinking, as if waiting for him to make the next move.

“What of it, Commander?”

“I had wanted to apologize for my actions that night. I should have not made such advances on you. I did not want…I mean, I do not want you to have to worry about…I did not mean to make you uncomfortable with my actions – I had not been, not that it’s an excuse, but I had been so angry and I did not mean to-”

Aurum had taken a daring step towards him as he spoke, crossing the threshold between polite conversation and intimate talk. Cullen’s words fell out of his mouth, and he stammered, trying to figure out what she was doing and why because she _was right there_ again. For her part, Aurum just wanted to see what he would do. That was all. He was apologizing, or attempting to, and while that was appreciated, it was not needed.

“Commander, it is quite alright. I do not hold it against you. As I recall, regardless, I had initiated our…dalliance, so you really have nothing to apologize for. I do not know if you maintain any of the, ah, vows? I don’t know, do Templars take vows of purity?”

His golden eyes nearly crossed as she leaned closer. His breath caught and the sound made her shake.

“N-no, it’s not required. The vows of chastity are for the ordained sisters, not the Templars. Some Templars do, to prove their dedication to the cause, but it is not asked of all of us.”

“And what of you? Did you take those vows? I would hate to think that I had you break any vow with my actions.”

“Maker, _no_ , I did no such thing. And I was the one who kissed you, which is why I apologize. Can we talk about something else, please?”

He looked from her to the wall, back to her, and then away again, one hand rubbing the back of his head nervously. Aurum remembered how the curls there had felt against her palm. His mouth was stretched into a nervous half-smile and she remembered how that scar had felt as it rubbed against her ear. She had an irrational fondness for that scar. She shook herself out of her brief rememberance and met Cullen’s gaze again. His eyes were dark, the sun in the middle of an eclipse. She was certain her own were more black than purple.

“You did start this conversation, Cullen. And no, I distinctly remember-”

His gloved hand cupped her chin and pulled her close, gently. She moved willingly, closing the distance between them, leaning closer, anticipation searing her and –

_knockknockKNOCK_

“Commander! We have some reports from Sister Leliana for you!”

A soldier, coming to report, shattered the moment, and Aurum stepped back, to an appropriate distance between Inquisitor and Commander, looking to the window instead of at the Cullen, who answered the door a bit gruffly. The report was given, the morning had begun, and it was rather time for her to leave.

“Commander, thank you for breaking fast with me this morning. I will see you in the War Room for the Council meeting later.”

Cullen looked at her, report in hand, and she had to have imagined it, but she swore he looked like she had just punted his halla-foal into the mouth of an archdemon. She swallowed the unusual knot in her throat, offered him a short bow, and left. Aurum would pretend she did not feel his eyes burning holes into her back.


	10. The Winter Palace

The ball rushed at her faster than expected. Vivienne designed a dress for her, and when Aurum saw it, she could not help the disgusted sound she made at it.

“That will look awful on me! My body shape won’t be flattered in that at all,” she said, grabbing the paper and drafting pencil from the startled Grand Enchanter.

“Darling, that is the style of the time. To come in anything else would make you a pariah. You either must wear the dreadful uniform Josephine drafted up, or you will have to wear a dress in that style in order to be taken seriously.”

Vivienne spoke slowly, as if Aurum was not listening properly, and Aurum rolled her eyes at the other mage.

“Or, and follow me on this, Vivienne, I will astound them with a fashion they have never seen. I am a Dalish Mage, purported to be the Herald of Andraste. If I _did_ show up in something that was normal, I feel like the court would be disappointed. Would it not be better to give them a show?”

Vivienne looked at the edits Aurum was making on the careful drawing she had made, watching as the Dalish made sweeping alterations to the way the dress would lay, how the fabric would be cut, and more importantly, scratching out the colors Vivienne had selected in favor of a more muted green and bronze palette. At first, the Grand Enchanter was unconvinced, not wanting to agree to such an egregious faux pas as having the Inquisitor show up in something that was anything but the highest of fashions, or at least something that indicated her status as Inquisitor.

But as Aurum worked, carefully sketching in the designs she had in mind, Vivienne’s doubt vanished.

“Darling, you have a novice’s hand, but I see what you mean. Here, the pencil, I will show you what I mean. You will be the belle of the ball by the time I’m done with this. If we play the Game right, we will revolutionize fashion. Men and women alike will clamor to dress as the Inquisitor did the day the Empire was saved. Maker preserve them.”

“And Creators, save their wallets. This will not be cheap, will it?” Aurum said, looking over the finalized design Vivienne had sketched on the back of the paper.

“Dearest, the best things in life never are.”

She could not deny the thrill that went through her. This…outfit was far more sumptuous than anything she had ever seen outside of Val Royeaux and she was going to _wear_ it. Aurum. The Dalish mage. The First of Clan Lavellan. She would be…she would be regal. She would be an elf draped in regality at Halamshiral. The thought made her heart swell.

“I will need a mask, I suppose. I leave the design of that entirely to you, as I have no idea how the masks are decided, or what they mean.”

“Oh, they mean _everything_ and _nothing_ , darling. It will certainly be grand. I am only sorry I must play The Game myself that evening rather than enjoy your style of play.”

Aurum shrugged a single shoulder, a non-committal gesture. The Game, as it was spoken of with Capital Letters and all, was not something Aurum found overly enchanting, or even distracting. It was a hunt, and it was as simple as that. Oh, for a surety, the nobles liked to dress it up as a life or death battle, but there was life, and there was death, and The Game was certainly neither. It was, however, a handy way to disguise your disgust for life. Aurum understood it, but she did not play by the rules.

“Well, we shall certainly see how it all goes. When the outfit is done, please have it taken to my rooms. I would rather the others not see it. It will lose some of its impact if they are not as awed as the rest of the room.”

“I adore the way you think, darling.”

“And I, you, Vivienne.”

The Grand Enchanter inclined her head graciously.

“Before you go, darling, how is the training with your sword coming along? I notice you do not usually practice in the field with the others, but I hear you are making divine progress.”

Aurum ducked her head in embarrassment. She had been learning the path of the Knight Enchanter, as Vivienne called it. It was a different school of thinking, but one that was at one point, solely Elvhen. Aurum had chosen it to be closer to the history of her people, and while it was something she felt as if she should have a greater understanding of because of her lineage, parts of it were still hard for her to understand with any manner of ease.

“I can hold a sword, but it is odd to get used to such a large weapon. I’ve only ever used daggers and a bow before. The sword is taking some getting used to. I try to train at night, or in my room, running the drills I have been taught. I do not like others to watch me practice.”

“You could always come to me for additional help, Aurum. Or, if you feel more comfortable, I’m certain any of our more war-inclined friends could teach you. Perhaps even the Commander. He is a fair hand with his sword and constantly teaching recruits. You could stand to learn much from such an arrangement.”

“I shall consider it, after the Ball. I do not need any new bruises between then and now.”

“Pragmatic as ever, darling.”

Again, Aurum offered a short bow to Vivienne before leaving the woman to her plotting. The new dress would be far more of a stir than the original design. Aurum did not have the body proportions to carry a ball gown without looking like some damned pastry gone horridly awry. She was still too lithe for that, even if she did have more curve and heft to her than the average elvhen gal. The food here was rich and filling, and Aurum had been trying very hard to proportion herself after the average human woman, mostly to make certain that she would not seem too alien, or malnourished, as the Dalish often looked.

But what she and Vivienne had come up with? Ah, it was glorious. A corseted forest green leather coat, with long, flowing sleeves, a hunter’s hood to cover her hair, cut sharply in the front to expose her legs, and left to flow in a long dovetail behind her. Her trousers would be midnight black, and over them, boots high enough to reach over her knees. So as not to appear prudish? Three points, down the center of her chest, where the leather folded open like the petals of a flower to reveal skin. She would be covered – _gloved_ even – everywhere else. This was not the ballgowns and corsets of current fashion in Orlais, nor was it the stuffy hyper-masculine ‘uniform’ Josephine had suggested for the group going as guests of the Inquisition.

It was something she could wear.

More importantly, it was something she could move in. Fight in.

And even _more_ importantly, it would be fit to her like sin on a whore in the Chantry. She would look immaculate, she would look deadly and delicious and, Creator’s fail her, if she did not adore the idea of that. Elvhen women were often lusted after. Something to do with the ears, or whatever, she did not care. But the lusting was often from men in positions of power over the elvhen in discussion…in that outfit though, there would be no denying that _she_ was the one in control.

The shiver that ran through her was entirely anticipatory. This would be…sublime.

* * *

She had insisted upon her own carriage. They had arranged for lodging near enough the Winter Palace so as to only need a short carriage trip, and while she had sent her advisors and companions on ahead, she had taken an extra few moments to adjust her clothing. When it had only been a drawing, she had been comfortable with it, but with it on her? She felt…exposed. The keyholes down her chest exposed more of her skin than she was used to, and while it was far from lewd, it was definitely more than she had expected.

She felt beautiful, yes, but that was equal parts due to the design of her clothing, and her mask, and to the jewelry Vivienne had given her.

Hesitantly, she adjusted the collar of rose gold around her throat, her gloved fingers feeling odd against the skin of her throat.

Her clothing was etched, embossed and embroidered with swirling designs of hawks and wolves in bronze and she had to take the long moments to admire herself in the mirror. She did look stunning. Everything about her was stunning, and perfect and she was _not at all nervous about going to the Winter Ball no she was also not stalling either._

Aurum swallowed her nervousness. She was the **Inquisitor** , and she was afraid of nothing. Especially not a party where everyone would be looking at her and waiting for her to make some sort of mistake or misstep. That would be ridiculous. For a Dalish elf, to be concerned for what would happen as she represented a growing power in Thedas at the site that once belonged to her people, while being a mage and female, and all while trying to prevent the assassination of the Empress.

“No worries here. None.”

She took a deep breath. She was ready.

The carriage ride was just long enough for her to calm herself down, so that when the door opened and the Winter Palace loomed in front of her she had the calm exterior the Inquisitor needed. The stares she received would have cowed a lesser being. But she was not a lesser being. She was the Inquisitor and she walked with beauty and grace.

The Grand Duke Gaspard greeted her warmly, his accent as thick as any in the Orlesian noble court. She responded in kind, murmuring softly, letting her Dalish accent bleed through. He smiled indulgently at her, and asked her to find him when she was ready to be introduced to the court. Aurum inclined her head graciously, and waited for him to wander elsewhere before starting on her investigation.

The gardens were beautiful, and after finding a ring for a woman, and returning it with all of the grace and poise she could muster at being told to find a ring for some shemlen woman who had mistaken her for someone who could be commanded around, she started looking into the locked rooms that flanked the gardens.

Her sensitive ears were a blessing. Even before she was to enter the ball itself, she had collected numerous interesting rumors. Leliana and Josephine would have a fit if she did not seek more information like this out. If the noblemen and women would not see fit to _give_ the Inquisition their support, Josephine could simply blackmail it out of them.

Six one way, and a half dozen the other.

As she always did, she investigated every nook and cranny, lining her pockets with baubles she could carry, looking for anything that could be useful. Documents, books, trinkets, whatever it was, she took it. Everything could be important, or sold for gold to buy things that were important.

When she was certain she had cleared everything of note out, she finally approached the gates to enter the party. She had to give everyone enough time to get into their own positions, and begin their own work for the party. Leliana, Josephine and Cullen would undoubtedly be doing what they were meant to do, as the Councilmembers of the Inquisition, but Bull, Dorian and Varric were her wildcards. Vivienne had secured an invitation on her own merit, which Aurum was thankful for, and Cassandra was a noblewoman of sorts, and had received an invitation as well. Aurum would be honestly surprised if Cole _wasn’t_ there, hiding and skulking about and Sera had her Jennies all in a row, just waiting for something to go tits up. This really only left Blackwall and Solas out, but both of them had expressed a desire to be at Skyhold instead of at the Palace.

Aurum did not entirely blame them. This evening was not well suited towards the two of them. Or her. But she did not really have a choice.

Leliana melted out of the shadows in the uniform Josephine had originally wanted everyone to wear to appear at Aurum’s side. Aurum passed on the information and documents she had already managed to abscond with, listened intently to what Leliana was saying, and nodded along.

“Oh, and Inquisitor?” Leliana said, stopping Aurum’s advancement into the foyer of the ball.

The Spymaster stepped forward and gently adjusted the coat she was wearing, ensuring that it lay flat against her body.

“ _Very_ nice shoes you have there.”

Aurum smiled, her cheeks pushing the filigree mask she wore up just the slightest bit.

“Thank you, Leliana.”

From there, it was another round of exploration in the Palace as she drew eyes and whispers wherever she went. Still, she heard new things, found a few more baubles, and then, when she was certain she was as ready for what was coming as she possibly could be, she approached the Grand Duke and indicated that she was well and ready to join the party.

He looked her over, from head to toe once again, and smiled broadly behind his mask.

“Come then, my Lady Inquisitor.”

* * *

The Grand Duke was introduced first, as was proper for a man of his station, and Cullen stood at the proper level of attention for when Aurum would be announced. Leliana had been smiling in the way she only smiled when something truly dastardly was afoot after her brief talk with Aurum, and he had yet to have time to ask the Spymaster why she had seemed so pleased.

“…and accompanying him, Lady Inquisitor Aurum, First of Clan Lavellan, Dirth’ena Enansal, Champion of the Blessed Andraste...”

A woman, garbed in deep green and gold stepped down to rest her hand on the Grand Duke’s arm. It took him far too long to recognize her as Aurum. Aurum was…wildness encapsulated, hooded and gloved and dripping with the sort of power that made men and women alike go weak. The whispering that followed her lengthy announcement would certainly have drowned out the announcements that followed, but graciously, the Court Herald paused, allowing her complete abandonment from the norms of dress to truly sink in.

The Empress stood at the far end of the ballroom, surrounded by her guards. Aurum lifted her hand from Gaspard’s arm, swept the hood from her head (revealing braids that must have taken hours to do, embellished with gemstones that glittered in their metal clasps, flanked on either side by the bands of shaved hair that Aurum loved so much, and ears that glittered with rose gold cuffs linked to emerald studs with a long length of chain that _begged_ to be tugged) and offered the Empress a full ceremonial bow, her hand clenched over her heart.

Aurum’s tailor needed to be given an extra bag of sovereigns, Cullen decided. He would see to it as soon as they were back at Skyhold and he figured out who Vivienne had paid to make whatever it was that Aurum was wearing. Her trousers fit her gloriously well, and that bow of hers had let the dovetail back of her coat split so that he could appreciate the, ah, workmanship.

She rose from her bow, put her gloved hand gently back upon the Grand Duke’s offered arm, and the introductory announcements continued. He heard his name and walked forward with his mind _firmly_ elsewhere. The Inquisitor…she was already off, talking with dignitaries and playing her part, which enabled him to find somewhere out of the way to stand and watch the entirety of the ballroom. If someone was going to attempt to assassinate the Empress, the ballroom was a good place to ensure the maximum number of people saw it.

He was almost _immediately_ set upon by a whole gaggle of Orlesian women who wanted nothing more than to dance with him and bat their doe-eyes at him from behind their very expensive masks. Turning them down was nearly impossible, it seemed. There was no truly polite way to back out, and he had to repeat himself to each woman at least three times before the next batch would swoop in. He swore they were going somewhere to readjust their corsets, or tighten them or _something_ because it seemed every time he saw a woman he had already turned down, she would return with _more_ cleavage showing and a not-at-all subtle smile after he took the few moments to notice.

It was going to be very hard to watch for any potential assassins if he kept being accosted by women with low-cut dresses.

“Commander Rutherford, how are you enjoying your evening?”

“I am rather envious of th-” he caught himself. The woman who was speaking now was not the same as all the others. This woman wore green leather and was covered nearly from neck to toe, save for the…near scandalous cut outs that traced down the center line of her chest.

Aurum’s eyes were sparkling with barely-contained mischief when he finally looked back to her face.

“My Lady Inquisitor, I hardly recognized you.”

“I am certain that was not meant as an insult to my usual state of dress, Commander.”

Her ears flicked. A joke? Maker, she was joking with him again.

“Of course not, my Lady. I merely…Maker, I don’t know what I meant. You are stunning, as ever.”

“As ever? I think you flatter me now, Commander.”

He nearly flushed, to the tittering amusement of the circle of women who had yet to leave him be. They laughed behind their fans, looking between the Commander and the Inquisitor. They whispered conspiratorially in Orlesian between each other. Aurum’s ear flicked irritably as they made comments about her and the Commander, but stilled her tongue. She did not need them to know she had taught herself Orlesian.

“And who are these fine women?”

“I don’t know but they won’t leave me alone.”

“Oh, you don’t like their attention? They seem _very_ attentive, Commander. I’m certain it is not often that they have such a strapping, handsome, soldier like you to dance with. Come now, _certainly_ you have room on your dance card for one of these lovely ladies.”

He gaped at her, and she smirked back at him. Her ears gave a conspiratorial flick, sending the chains connecting the cuffs to the studs to jangling against each other. Her purple-blue eyes _sparkled_ with mischief and he found himself fumbling for words.

“I…you are a bad person. I do not dance, but if you insist, Lady Inquisitor, I shall inflict my ineptitude on you later this evening.”

He had caught her off guard! Her eyes widened and for the briefest of moments, he thought he had managed to throw her off completely. But she recovered, and her smile grew…wolfish.

“Ah, Commander, of course! I have an open dance after the second gavotte, shall I add you to my card?”

The women who had flanked him immediately swarmed, trying to cajole a dance out of Cullen who could not curse at the Inquisitor as he wished to. She had done that on _purpose_ , just to get him in trouble with the women again. The need for revenge burned him even as he watched her graciously accept an invitation to the floor by one of the younger Antivan Lords in attendance. She and he cut an impressive pattern across the floor to the tempo of the music, her partner guiding her as divinely as any other partner could.

The dance was a sensual one, far removed from the courtly, prudish dances of Orlais, and it kept both partners were in nearly full-body contact with one another at all times. Cullen could not look away, not even as the women around him continued their tittering, consumed with the thought of how it would be to dance with her like that, to slide his hand down her back, pull her flush against him, _Maker_ to move with her like _that_. The court, of course, loved this, as it was also a dance that was incredibly easy to stumble through, and embarrass oneself with. The steps were fast, and had to be accurate, as did every other movement that was even _thought_ of, let alone made.

But Aurum kept pace.

No, better than that...

Aurum began to dictate the pace, throwing flairs into her steps that her partner could not match. She, quite simply, out-danced him, light on her feet where he stumbled, elegant and tall when he slouched, and laughing brightly when his own face turned down into a scowl.

The dance ended, with her victorious, hardly breathing heavily next to a partner that gasped for breath. Aurum turned to him and offered him a deep curtsy before leaving him standing, panting, on the dance floor as the orchestra began the next dance-song. Aurum beamed at those who tittered at her, and politely declined further dances, leaving the ballroom for the cool air of the outdoors.

Cullen wished he could go out as well, but he was still backed against the wall by women who wanted a marriage, or _worse_ a dance. He had given one to the Inquisitor and now it seemed all these women wanted one as well.

* * *

“Festis beu umo canavarum, Dorian.”

The mage jumped a good few inches off the ground, spinning quickly to see who had spoken Tevene at him, only to see Aurum smirking at him. She had just spoken with the arcane advisor Celene kept and there was a certain…urgency in what was happening now.

“Ven _hedis_ , Aurum, I did not start teaching you Tevene so you could sneak up on me and nearly give me a heart attack.”

“Ah, but it’s so fun to make you fluster Dorian. You get all manners of interesting as soon as I prick you _juuuuust_ so!” she snarked, jabbing him quickly in the ribs with a finger.

Dorian was not so crass as to _yelp_ , but he certainly moved out of her range, in case of further attacks.

“Yes, thank you, I’m so pleased you find my fear of seeing my mother here amusing.”

“The pleasure is mine, Serah Pavus. Shall we walk a ways, Hahren?”

“Of course, falon.”

The pre-established code was given and responded to in the positive, and Dorian offered her his arm so that they could walk and talk without interruption. She needed to get further into the palace to explore what was going on, and Dorian was going to be her cover. A quick whisper in his ear in front of one of the elvhen servants would have the court buzzing within moments, and that would give the both of them time to explore, while giving Bull and Varric both something to overhear and know to start looking for the both of them. Two mages of their caliber could handle just about anything hiding in the Palace, and give her an easy way to explain away being somewhere she should not be, if she was caught.

“I cannot believe I agreed to letting you _use_ me like this, Inquisitor,” Dorian sighed as they encountered the first resistance in their explorations, dispatching the danger quickly. They had smuggled their staffs in and were lazily fighting through the few people who were rising against them.

“Hey, I brought Bull along too. You can go moon after him when we’re done. Even better, I could go get him to come this way. Can you imagine him bursting out of that formal suit? I bet he could do it too. Just one…good…flex, and,” her magic exploded around her, a dazzling display of power she did not exhibit around anyone other than the Tevinter. No one else needed to know how strong she really was.

“You are a _bad_ person, Aurum.”

She laughed, spinning quickly on her heel to throw a lightning bolt at the head of a fleeing assassin.

“Second time I’ve heard that here. Cullen said the same thing when I conned him into a dance. You should be sure to watch that. It will certainly be an event.”

Dorian thought, briefly, about teasing her for wasting all that time he and Vivienne had spent teaching her the Orlesian court dances on the Commander, but found something more juicy to needle her on in her simple statement instead.

“So it’s ‘Cullen’ now, is it? Not ‘The Commander’? My dear, have you begun to warm to our favorite blond ex-templar?”

Aurum flicked her ear irritably, and shot a icy blast at Dorian’s feet.

“These shoes are not to blame for your little infatuation, leave them out of this.”

“I… _you’re_ a bad person, Dorian Pavus.”

It was his turn to laugh as they continued the fight. There was a roar from behind them, and The Iron Bull was charging past, his huge war-axe cleaving the next-closest assassin in two. Dorian turned to look at Aurum, who just waggled her eyebrows conspiratorially at him. His response was a disgusted “ _ugh”_ that **almost** hid the wry smirk that the Tevinter wore as he watched a shirtless Bull swinging his huge weapon hither and thither.

There was a betrayal (not shocking) and a fight (banal) and then a race to save the Empress, all set to the sounds of Dorian and Bull _definitely not_ flirting. All in all, it was actually rather nice. Excepting for the growing nervousness that grew in Aurum's gut as she realized just what she would have to do in order to see this through properly. Ah, yes, but she was the Inquisitor. This was something she could do.

* * *

“Grand Duchess Florianne, I am ever so sorry about the delay. I had other partners to tend to. But I am well and able to dance our second grand pas de deux, if you would indulge me.”

Her voice was clear and _firm_ and Aurum was overwhelmingly proud of both of those traits because she felt neither. There was no time to explain, no time to call Cullen to arrest the Grand Duchess, no time to get people into position to defend the Empress. She had to act on her own, and a confrontation with the Grand Duchess was the only way to stop what was happening without bloodshed.

Florianne looked at her as if she was a ghost. Good, she still had the upper hand. Aurum gracefully descended the stairs towards the Duchess, her shoulders back and eyes glittering. She tilted her chin down, just the slightest bit, and let her mouth hang just the slightest bit open. It made her feel _strong_ and _powerful_ to adopt the visage of the Wolf, to treat Florianne as prey.

“I must confess, Grand Duchess, I had worried that the assassins and demons you had sent after me would have kept me from engaging in this most delicate of dances. I would have hated to miss the culmination – the part when you attempted to murder the Empress in the name of Corypheus. I would have also hated to miss the part where I foiled you with a dash of half-felt bravado.”

Aurum stood at an appropriate distance from Florianne, and held a hand out to her, inclining her head in a danseur’s bow.

“Shall we dance, my Lady?” Aurum purred, not rising out of her bow.

Florianne’s hand strayed, and faster than most eyes could track, Aurum drew her own weapon, pulling the lazurite hilt she had spent hours enchanting and carving from the secret slit in her coat. The golden blade swung up at Florianne’s neck, and the Grand Duchess froze, her assassin’s blade in hand.

“Now, now, Florianne. Don’t be stupid. We have four witnesses to your treachery, the bodies of your own men, and of course, you _did_ confess your intent to the Inquisitor. Drop your weapon, or I’ll drop **you**.”

“G-G-Gas _pard_!” Florianne wailed, looking to her brother. Aurum kept her own gaze on Florianne, not trusting the would-be assassin.

She knew that could be deadly. She also knew that her allies would be circling already, ready to assist as soon as it was needed. Florianne whined and cajoled for a few minutes longer, her hand still on the knife. Aurum did not waver, holding her summoned sword steady. Her swordwork may be lacking still, but she could still kill Florianne if she needed to.

For a few more minutes, Aurum let the caterwauling continue. She waited until she could see Cullen in her periphery, with a contingent of people she knew were loyal to the Inquisition following behind him before she spoke again, cutting through Florianne’s diatribe.

“That’s enough Florianne. Commander, have your men take her away.”

The Grand Duchess was chained and taken away, to the shock of the court. There were not-so-hushed whispers and gasps, and then Empress Celene was summoning her to the balcony to speak with Briala and Gaspard. The conversation was not a long one, and by the end, she had secured the loyalty of all three of the people. They had underestimated the Dalish Inquisitor. And now the two conspirators would pay in manpower and intelligence, if they valued their reputations, and the Empress was more than happy to offer everything in thanks for her life and crown.

Aurum did not let the nerves take her until she had found an abandoned balcony all her own. Morrigan had come to speak to her, and while she appreciated the other mage’s appearance and help, something about the mage put Aurum on edge. It was not a bad edge, mind you, but Morrigan had this odd way of making Aurum feel like she should be standing straighter and paying close attention to the woman’s odd speech patterns. Still, it seemed as if Morrigan was pleased with how Aurum had handled everything, which was a boon.

She leaned her elbows on the banister of the balcony, staring out into the darkness that had enveloped Halamshiral. The mask she had worn all evening came off, both literally and metaphorically as she stood alone, and she placed the delicate metal piece of art next to her. It would be unbecoming for her to be seen without it on, now that she was the hero of the Ball, but thankfully, the nobles seemed _far_ more interested in talking amongst themselves than talking to her for now.

What she would not do for a drink of something alcoholic. Something _really_ alcoholic. Something that could get her drunk enough to not care about all the political shenanigans that were happening around her so that she could relax and be herself for just a few moments.

“Ah, Lady Inquisitor Aurum, there you are.”

She turned, reaching for her mask with a sigh. Cullen caught her wrist and pushed it away.

“No, no need for masks, I promise. I just wanted to talk. How…are you, Aurum?”

She could pretend to not hear the way his voice slid over her name. The way her name sounded rougher than it usually did. He did not soften the ‘r’ in Aurum the way she did, the way others did. It was just the Ferelden in him, she was sure, but still. It was refreshing.

“I am,” she sighs, trying to collect her thoughts. Of course, soon as he asked, all of her emotions roared at once and she had to filter through them. “I am tired, Commander. It has been a _long_ evening.”

He rested his elbows on the banister next to her and Aurum looked at him, waiting to see what it was that the Commander wanted. Carefully, he reached out and rested a hand on her shoulder. Companionable, not presumptuous. She reached over to place her hand on top of his. Acceptance, and an excuse for his hand to linger, perhaps, a few moments longer. The way his hand squeezed her arm, and then slid down to her elbow, hovering there for just a few seconds before he pulled his hand away to rest it near her own on the bannister. She tried not to stare at his hand, or think about how she could have sworn she had felt his heat through the glove he wore _and_ her own clothing. That would be silly.

“Maker, I know it is foolishness, but I was worried about you tonight, Aurum. I’m glad this is over.”

She huffed a laugh, looking back out over the banister to the land that had once belonged to the elvhen. Halamshiral. Would that it was just that.

Cullen chuckled in response, turning back towards the ballroom just behind them. Music floated through the air, and the part of her brain that Vivienne had spent the past few weeks drilling in dances and musical bars chimed in that this was the song that had been meant to follow the gavotte.

“I believe…well, I suppose I may never have this chance again, so I ask, my Lady Inquisitor, may I have this dance?”

Aurum looked at Cullen, who was offering her the polite bow that indicated the start of a dance. She stepped forward, already reaching for his offered hand and standing ready for the first step. Still, she could not help the quip at the tip of her tongue.

“My dear Commander, I thought you did not dance.”

He took her hand gracefully and pulled her close, almost inappropriately so for two people of their station, wrapping his arm around her waist and holding her as delicately as wolves held eggs in their mouths. Aurum beamed at him as he began the dance, following his lead, and not caring that they could be doing every single step wrong.

“For you, Aurum, after all that happened tonight? I can at least try.”

Creators, he spoke straight into her _ear_ , and she could feel the warmth of his breath ghosting across the lobe.

“Just…mind my toes, would you? You humans are a great deal heavier than my people and after all that has gone on, broken toes would be quite the letdown.”

He chuckled, and reached up to gently tug on one of the chains of her earrings, a gentle reprimand that sent liquid fire through her blood. She took an instinctive step towards him, pressing against him entirely too close for propriety but there was still no one watching them. The night was dark enough to hide her blush, and the music of a volume to disguise her gasp, but when she looked up to him, he was smirking at her, his scar tugged to the side with the stupid movement. She disguised the momentary lapse with a quick step backwards at the earliest possible moment, however his hand on her waist now kept her just the slightest bit closer to him, regardless. If she ended up stepping closer to him as the dance continued, if they danced with their chests pressed together, their faces just inches apart, their eyes gazing into the other's own, it was nothing. Still professional. 

Still professional when the dance ended and she did not pull away and he held her until the next song began. The others on her card could wait - would wait. She and Cullen danced together on the balcony, oblivious to all else in Halamshiral except the other.

Aurum had a real fucking problem now. She might actually –

_No, no no no no._

No problems.

Just a dance with her Commander. The Commander. Not _her_ Commander. Just _the_ Commander. The Commander. Yep.

No problems.

 **Huge** problems.


	11. The Loss

The after-effects of the Ball were long reaching, and for a while, there was peace in Skyhold. There was, of course, the concern about what was happening with the Grey Wardens, and that would be resolved in due time, but for a few days, Aurum was content to let everyone rest. There had been so much that had happened at the ball that it only felt right to have time away from it all.

She swallowed her fear as the envoy Josephine had sent to Wycome seemed to take forever to return word of what had happened. Clan Lavellan would not succumb easily, but Keeper Istimaethoriel had seemed worried, and that would have put her on edge in even the most banal of circumstances, but this fiasco at Wycome had the Keeper both nervous and in _danger_.

Aurum tried to keep her mind off of it, setting about the tasks that were banal, even if they were a bit risky for the common folk. The tasks did nothing to soothe her. In fact, they only added to her growing irritation as news _still_ did not come from Wycome. Her Clan could be in trouble and these shemlen wanted her to fucking go kill a bear that was just _so scary_?

But as soon as those thoughts came, she abandoned them. That was unkind of her, unfair of her. Her own problems could not take precedence, as much as it pained her to admit that. The world needed to be saved. She was the person that was tasked with saving it. It fell to her, and she could not let her own…worry overwhelm her. Clan Lavellan still lived. That was all that she could let herself think of.

Cullen and her were…amicable. She had come across him and Dorian playing a game of chess in the gardens, and had watched, casually interested in the game she had never actually learned to play. It had never seemed important, but the excuse to sit and talk with them was always welcome. Aurum was picking up all sorts of habits and skills from her companions, and she did not mind learning how to play chess.

For the first few games, she merely watched Dorian and Cullen play, quietly commenting as the two men dueled. Cullen would usually manage to come out victorious, but that was more than likely Dorian just waiting for there to be money bet on the outcome of a game. Goodness knows Dorian lost enough money to Varric to need to have a surefire way of making up what he lost.

She kept that to herself, however, letting Cullen and Dorian play as she observed. Of the things she learned, the most interesting was that Dorian was an absolute asshole, and the second most interesting was that Cullen had no ability to mask his emotions when it came to playing a game. She could tell when the game was going well, or when it wasn’t, based solely on how Cullen’s face had settled.

The weeks that she spent in Skyhold, concerned for her Clan were made better by those weekly chess matches, and when time permitted, she always tried to be there. It was a chess match like any other that she interrupted one week, after a meeting with one of the Orlesian ambassadors had gone overlong. As she approached, Cullen stood from the table. Ever the respectful Ferelden human, he was.

“Leaving, are you? Does that mean I win?” Dorian drawled, smirking up at the Commander.

Cullen frowned, looking down at the Tevinter mage before actually managing to greet Aurum. He sat with a huff and the game continued. Dorian taunted the Commander, which was not unusual, but it appeared whatever they had been talking about in her absence had stoked the Commander’s emotions. Because Cullen nearly snarled at Dorian’s satisfied grin when the Tevinter mage suggested that his victory was imminent.

Cullen was victorious in the end, and while Dorian sulked, Aurum offered the victor her congratulations. She did not miss the way Dorian’s handsomely orchestrated pout turned into a wide, grin out of the corner of her eye. When she turned to him, the petulant pout was back, and he was making some stupid excuse to leave instead of proceed on to the next game, as they _always_ did. There were always two matches. Because that was just how they went about their games.

And then he was suggesting _she_ take his place and keep the Commander company, with an eyebrow wag to rival the one she gave him when she needled him about how much he ‘appreciated’ Bull.

“Fasta _vass_ , Dorian,” she growled at him. He just laughed, and waved as he walked away.

Her ears alternated between flat against her skull and relaxed as she watched Dorian saunter off, still growling every last curse he had ever taught her in Tevene at his stupid back. When Cullen coughed politely from behind her, Aurum turned to him quickly, the barest hint of a blush on her neck and an apology already on her lips.

“Commander, I’m sorry, I di- Dorian is a bad person, and has been teaching me how to be mouthy in Tevene. I was anxious to…fuck it, I don’t know. He’s a bad person and you need a second game. May I?”

“Please, Inquisitor, it would be a pleasure. I’ll prepare the board.”

She smiled at him, and sat, crossing her legs neatly and waiting for him to take the first move, as he always did.

“I used to play this game with my sister. She would get this stuck-up grin on her face whenever she beat me. Which was _all_ the time.”

The exposition came unexpectedly, and Aurum looked up quickly from the board. If it was story-telling and chess-playing then she might have to change her tactics a bit. Not that she knew many tactics other than ‘cheat a lot’ and ‘make snide comments while cheating’, courtesy of Dorian Pavus, most recently of Minrathous.

“So says the man who just sassed a Tevinter Altus out of the gardens after his victory.”

Cullen laughed, and shook his head. He made his move, and she made her response. All the watching she had done had given her a pretty good idea of how the game was played, though she was far from confident in her ability to win.

“Point, Inquisitor.”

“Cullen, please. My name is Aurum. I did not know you had siblings though. How many do you have?”

“Two sisters and a brother. I don’t write them nearly as much as I should. Between serving with the Templars and the Inquisition, I haven’t seen them in years…I wonder if she still plays.”

Aurum made a sound under her breath, considering her next move. Watching Cullen and Dorian play was one thing, and then actually playing it was something completely different. Still, she played to the utmost of her abilities, asking questions about his family, and answering questions about her Clan in return. The game carried on for a long while, with Cullen gently chiding her when she made an illegal move, and Aurum reacting as best she could in the unfamiliar circumstance of playing a game like this.

“I think this is the longest we have ever gone without discussing the Inquisition or, ah, related matters,” he offered after their conversation trailed off. “To be honest, I appreciate the distraction.”

Aurum did not respond right away, staring at the board to see what the next best move would be.

“We should do this more often,” she finally responded, her voice soft as she made her move.

“I-I would like that.”

Cullen’s stammer gained him a warm smile from the Inquisitor. His next move was not the optimal move to make, and Aurum took advantage, turning the rhythm of the battle to her favor. He sighed, realizing his mistake and Aurum chuckled.

“Good. I enjoy playing this game with you, Cullen.”

“We should-”

The way he had started speaking drew her attention immediately, and Aurum looked up at him from the game board sharply, trying to figure out why his voice was doing that _thing_. Her ears flared out to better hear whatever it was that the Commander had to say. He caught her gaze and held it, his mouth half-open and his eyes doing that whole “sun-in-the-middle-of-an-eclipse” thing that Aurum had promised herself to stop thinking about.

She had never really managed, however.

“We should finish our game. Right. My turn?”

She nodded, and the game continued. It was close, but –

“I believe this game is mine, Aurum. You played well. Perhaps next time, you will manage to win.”

Aurum laughed and leaned back in the chair, looking down to the board that still bore her loss. If she had been younger, she would have kicked the board over in mock impudence, but she was older now, and not to mention, also the Inquisitor. Cullen smirked at her, and her eyes dipped to his mouth. She swallowed heavily, and tore her eyes away so she could make eye contact with him again.

“You are very kind, Cullen. I will see what I can do to improve. I do so love to win, you know.”

He chuckled, but she saw the blush on his cheeks anyway. They parted ways with smiles all around, Cullen holding the board and all the pieces carefully.

* * *

Her clan was dead. If there were survivors, the Inquisition could find none. She was alone. There was no Clan Lavellan, she was not the First. She was Aurum. Clanless.

She would endure.

Josephine could not look at her without tears, so Aurum sent a letter to her younger sister to find what Josephine liked so that she could gift something to the poor Ambassador. Because she did not want Josephine to feel bad. This was not Josephine’s fault. Aurum did not blame her. There was no anger in her heart. No, nothing. There was nothing in her heart.

She consoled Josephine.

And Aurum withdrew. She stopped going to meet with her companions. She would go out into the field, accomplish their task, and come back to Skyhold. She would go to the War Room, coordinate with Leliana, Josephine and Cullen, and then return to her room. If she was not out in the field, she was either in the War Room or her own quarters.

She had only this one thing to do now. Be the Inquisitor. She was the Inquisitor. That was what was important now. She had to be the Inquisitor. That was all she had left.

She would endure.

* * *

A guest came to the gates of Skyhold, bearing the vallaslin of the Dalish. They introduced themselves, and the guardsmen jumped to attention, knowing that this person could possibly help the Inquisitor. They had all the appropriate accoutrements, and the person hissed the importance of seeing the Inquisitor _immediately,_ without delay. Of course, everyone agreed.

No one even asked for the visitor to take their hood down. This was, of course, the person the Inquisitor needed. They were perfect. Everything was perfect. That was all that mattered.

Maker bless this person, because they were perfect. Perfect. Everything was perfect.

* * *

The knock at her door came uncommonly late at night, and Aurum was already in her bedclothes. She had just been reading the reports pertaining to the most recent events she had been organizing. The report detailing what had happened to her clan remained at the bottom of the pile, unread and unacknowledged. If she read it, it was real.

It was real enough without having to read every blasted detail of it all.

Her Clan was dead.

She must endure.

The knock, though, that was unexpected. No one knocked at her door anymore. They knew better. Nothing good came from knocking at her door and disturbing her reveries. The last page who had tried had gotten both eyebrows singed clean off and still shook whenever there was an overly loud thunderclap in the distance. Aurum knew she should apologize, but she had said that she did not want to be disturbed and the page had disturbed her.

The door sounded again.

Aurum stood quickly, her chair clattering loudly. She stormed to the door, magic already rippling around her as her calm gave way to a rage that burned hot enough to send a flush racing across her skin. She nearly ripped the door off its hinges as she opened it inwards, a snarling elvhen curse on her lips –

“Is that any way to greet your Keeper, da’len?”

Her heart stopped, and then restarted all at once, thundering loudly against her ribs.

“ _Deshanna_ ,” Aurum whispered, already reaching for the cloaked figure, her mind singing. Her Clan was not dead! Deshanna was here, Deshanna had survived, her Keeper Deshanna Istimaethoriel Lavellan was here. The Clan survived. The Clan survived and she was _not_ alone!

Her happiness was a drug, washing over any doubt she may have. All she had was near-delirium, an acute longing and _need_ and _desire_ for this to be real and that overwhelmed all else. She was not alone. She was not the Last. She was still the First. She was the First, she belonged somewhere, she had a purpose beyond meaningless titles, she had a Clan, she was not alone, because Deshanna was here and that meant that the Clan could live on. There was so much fevered happiness inside of her that Aurum could hardly believe it was even real. No one person could feel like **this** in truth, but here she was! Feeling like that! Happy! So happy it might actually hurt her.

“My darling First, I have missed you so,” Deshanna purred, opening her arms for a hug.

Aurum stepped towards Deshanna, smiling broadly. This was everything she could have wanted. She wanted with an acuity that ached through her entire being.

The hood fell away, and Aurum recognized her mistake. Her magic, already half-summoned tried to protect her, tried to form a barrier between her body and the _other_ , but it was too late. Far, far too late.

* * *

“Commander! Commander Cullen! Commander, please open your door, I must speak with you!”

Cole rarely ever raised his voice, and even then, the softer tone of the boy-ghost rarely carried a command with enough firmness to be taken seriously. Cullen, however, looked up from his paperwork at the note of panic in the boy-ghost’s words. He did not move with the utmost of urgency, but he answered the door within moments.

“Cole, what is it?”

“It is not her, the guest. The guest wears the face of one she had loved, a mother figure, a father figure, all she had to call family, and is hurting her. She made a mistake, she made a _mistake_ and it will be the last one she makes because she cannot scream, her voice is stuck in her throat and she can only hope that I hear her hurt and try and fix it. Creators, does she _hurt_ , Cullen. It is hurting her very soul and I can’t shut her out. _Go!_ ”

The other advisors gave him guff for wearing his full armor every single day, even in Skyhold, to the point where he had to sit through _quite_ the comments on the carriage ride to the Ball at the Winter Palace, this was exactly the reason why he wore it. He bolted, charging for Aurum’s quarters. There was only one person Cole’s warning could have referred to, and it was the Inquisitor.

Solas saw him coming, sword drawn and began a warding gesture, but Cullen barked a command at the elven apostate, he could not even remember what he _said_ , only that it made Solas turn and reach for his staff and call up a barrier to wrap around them both, falling into step behind Cullen seamlessly. Cole did not follow, too wrapped up in trying to fix her hurts from afar, because he did not want to be near the demon.

Maker preserve them, Cullen only hoped they were not too late.

* * *

_Halamshiral was beautiful in the spring. She walked in power and grace, a dress more beautiful than anything that had ever existed in the time of Arlathan wrapped about her body. Her People were safe, protected, feared and adored as the rightful masters of Thedas. There were flowers blooming, and where the Palace had once been, there was now only a garden that –_

**That is not right. It does not happen like that. Stop it, get _out_ of my head. Stop.**

“Stop fighting, dearest. Stop resisting. Let me in.”

_She was Keeper of Clan Lavellan, known throughout the Dales as Keeper, not Inquisitor. No, she had abandoned that title long ago, leaving the shemlen to their destruction and raising an army of elves against Corypheus, ousting him from the Emerald Graves, ousting him from the world, ousting him entirely, and now they were glorified. Vindicated. Rulers. They were beauty and power and she wore both like a vicious mantle now. She was feared. And she, one of the Keepers, orchestrator of this whole –_

**Stop it. That is not right. Get _out_. **

“Let me in.”

She tried to struggle. Opening her eyes only led to blackness, but she could feel claws on her throat, and knew that the demon who had worn the skin of her Keeper to gain entrance to Skyhold. She was in Skyhold. Her magic was locked away inside of her. She could not stop the demon from holding her magic down, and even if Aurum could use her skills, she doubted she would use them properly.

A desire demon was not something that could be banished easily by a mage once they were _inside_ you. You just hoped that someone would come by soon enough before they dug deep enough to find something you could not resist. Aurum could resist much. This was not her first brush with a demon, nor would it be her last but it had gotten so close and there was not much else it could think to taunt her with unless it went with truest fantasy and that which she wanted as much as she revieled.

“Now isn’t that an idea?”

Pleasure splintered in a thousand different ways, pulling her desires with conjured images that flashed too fast to be seen until -

_He had her held down, his hands gently wrapped around her wrists, a chastisement, more than a real forced bondage. She was stretched out over the War Table, her tunic pushed up over her hips and his other hand sliding down her stomach to slip beneath her smalls._

_“You’re **soaking** wet, Aurum,” he growled at her, pressing his mouth against her ear in a mockery of affection. “Maker, you’re so wet for me. You cannot wait for me to be inside of you, filling you entirely. You cannot wait for the way my cock fits in you, can you? You’re dripping all over the Frostback mountains, you know.”_

_She tried to respond, a half-hearted rebuttal, but he bit the very tip of her ear with just enough force for there to be pain and simultaneously ran the gloved pad of his finger over her clit. Her voice broke over his name, and her back arched up against the armor he always insisted upon wearing. He only chuckled and shoved two of his fingers inside of her with brutal ease, pressing a kiss against her ear when she keened her pain._

_He kept at her ears, biting, nibbling, kissing, pressing his mouth against her ear, tracing the lines of her lobe with his tongue. She trembled beneath him, overwhelmed by the sensation, her instincts telling her that this was an act of submission, because she was **giving** him what he wanted and it made her happy to do so. She ached to submit to him. She wanted it. _

_His fingers made short work of her ability to stay still, or stay quiet. Desire blistered her blood, and she writhed beneath him as he worked her to the edge of absolute pleasure, before backing off entirely. The feeling of his gloves inside her was unusual, and she tried not to think too hard about it, too consumed with lust to really care about anything other than how he made her feel._

_She tried to pull her hands down out of his grasp, whining for him to continue because she was so_ close _and she **needed** but he only chuckled and withdrew his hand from her. She whimpered, an entirely unbecoming sound for her but she had no real choice. She needed him. _

_“Lick, Aurum,” he commanded, pressing his fingers against her lips._

_Her obedience came naturally, and she opened her mouth to his intruding fingers. His gloves tasted of sweat, and steel, and of her own arousal, and she hungrily lapped at them, not caring how wanton it was. She needed him. She needed him._

_He rewarded her with a breathy moan, and pulled his hand away from her. She mewled, struggling weakly against his hold, but too…too aroused to care. She wanted him. He pulled his glove off with his teeth, and all at once, his bare fingers were inside of her, stroking and pressing up and up and **in** until she was panting and unable to even form the words she needed to say. He pressed his mouth to her ear again, letting her feel the scar she adored so keenly before –_

_“Let me have you, Aurum. Let me take you just like this. Maker’s breath, I want you so badly. Tell me I can have you, tell me you belong to me, tell me Aurum,_ **tell** _me.”_

_The words were buzzing the tip of her tongue, she wanted to say them, she would feel so good if she said them but…but…_

“Aurum!”

His voice broke the trance, and she tensed beneath the demon. She could feel its grip on her wrists, the press of her own bedsheets against her back, the way it was dampening her magic, but the momentary recoil of the demon, the distraction, the split second where it could not decide what, or _who_ , its prey was was all Aurum needed.

Her magic was a firestorm, and it caught the demon squarely, forcing it away from her with enough force for her to scramble clear. She reached backwards, hoping that she had not forgotten where she was in her room because her staff should be just –

“Inquisitor, stay _down_!”

She dropped to her stomach, abandoning her search for her weapon, covering her head with both arms and waiting for someone to give her the all-clear. The demon screeched, and she curled in on herself, not wanting to hear the demon at all. The sound seemed like it cut straight through her, causing her far more pain than any desire demon had ever done with the sound before. Sounds of battle followed shortly behind, and Aurum stayed still, still waiting for someone to tell her it was all right again.

She could feel herself shaking. She was so scared, so scared, and confused and things were not clicking into place as they normally did. Her mind could not decide where it wanted to be, or where it was in truth.. The demon’s magic was too far in her own for extrication to go quickly, or smoothly.

“Aurum, Aurum it is gone, get up now, please.”

She stood on uncertain legs, opening her eyes to a ruined room. Her eyes first fell to her bed, where there was blood and demonic ichor seeping into the sheets and mattress. Had she been hurt? She did not feel anything yet. It was hard to think. Aurum looked down, checking for blood, but there was a lot of ichor on her too, which made her think that she should get out of these clothes and burn them before too long.

“I need to buy a new bed,” she said absently, blinking owlishly at the ruined piece of furniture.

Solas reached her first, grabbing her by the chin and forcing her to look at him. He was rather hazy in her eyes, bleeding out around the edges. She swore she saw something more animalistic in him, but when she blinked again, it was gone. Odd. Aftereffect of the demons? Maybe. He was standing in front of her, peering deeply into her eyes, as if he was looking for something.

“Solas?”

“Lethallan, era seranna ma.”

He kissed her fiercely, pressing his mouth to hers with a hunger she had never thought to associate with the elvhen apostate. He held her flush to him, pulling her close when she struggled to get away. That was nice and all, but she did not appreciate being kissed without a good reason, and when she pulled herself away from him, pushing him back with a barrier that shimmered threateningly, he smiled.

“You are well, then, Aurum? Convinced this is not the conjuring of the demon?” he asked coolly, as if he had not just had his mouth sealed against hers like she was the last breath of air and he, a drowning man.

“I am wonderful. My head hurts and a fucking desire demon impersonated my dead Keeper to try and possess me. What on earth would put me in a mood after that?”

Solas gave a barely-there smirk, and excused himself from her room. Aurum stared at his retreating back, intent upon figuring out what the fuck was going on with Solas. Cullen, with ichor splashed across his armor and his sword still bared was staring as well, with something rather close to hatred at Solas’s back. Aurum looked at Cullen, and then looked away quickly. The demon had worn his face in her mind to try and cajole her into something and she had not given in, but it had been so much more tempting that way. Power had not seduced her, power had been  _wrong_ , but he had made it feel  _right_ and that was terrifying. Aurum edged around her ruined bed, walking back towards her door. She would sleep elsewhere in Skyhold for tonight, but it would be of the utmost rudeness to not ensure he was unharmed from the brief scuffle.

“Cullen, I-”

He turned sharply to look at her as soon as she spoke, his eyes more black than gold, and in two long steps had entered her personal space, his sword arm wrapping around her waist to pull her flush to his, his free hand cradling the back of her head as he, too, kissed her ferociously, not waiting for her to give in to him, but demanding she do so anyway. Aurum relented against him almost immediately, molding her body to the lines of his armor, not caring that it was smearing blood across her. This was not the conjuring of a demon. This was real. She could feel it in her bones that this was _real_. This was real and delicious and Creator's that scar was going to destroy her.

“Andraste’s flaming _ass_ , Aurum, don’t you dare do that again,” he growled at her when he finally pulled away from her.

“I promise not to let a desire demon who was wearing the face of the person I considered both father and mother, or the face of my desires to me nearly possess me after revealing what they really are again, Cullen,” she replied drily, licking her lips and _pleased_ to taste Cullen there. A half-there giggle dripped from her lips, and she was quick to cover her mouth.

“That is not what I mean, and you know it, damn it all. You could have died, or **worse** tonight, this is not the time for stupid jokes. How could you hold all that inside and _laugh_ , Aurum?”

He sounded genuinely pained, and she looked at him carefully. Her scrutiny must have taken a moment to long, because Cullen looked down at her, and their embrace, and released her, stepping away from her until she was at a safe distance from him again. A blush reddened his cheeks and ear, and Aurum hated the part of her that loved that blush.

Still, he looked to her, expecting a response. So she would give one. The truthful one. The one that had made it so that she could not bear being around others, for fear of breaking her stony visage in front of others.

“Because I cannot let myself cry, Cullen. I must endure.”

Her response caught him off guard entirely, and he looked away from her quickly, his blush fading fast. He sheathed his sword and did not meet her gaze. Cullen could see the print of the blood from his armor on her clothing, and his face heated all over again. He had acted out of turn, mimicking Solas in a fit of something that could maybe have been jealousy.

“I-I’m sorry, Inquisitor. I spoke…I acted out of turn. I will have some of the servants come in to clean your room immediately. Do – _are_ you okay, Aurum?”

“As much as I can be currently, yes. Thank you for asking.”

Her hands were shaking and her mind was still not settled, but the numbness of loss and being reminded of it, quickly dulled the fright of having a desire demon so close to winning her over. The mourning that had enabled it to draw so close to her was also what now enabled her to step away from what would have rightfully been a panic attack at coming so near absolute annihilation.

He stared at her for a few moments longer, trying to judge what the best course of action would be. Aurum decided that for him.

“Can you please wake Dorian and tell him what happened. He has had experience with desire demons as well, and I do not…want to sleep alone tonight. Please,” she asked softly, not looking to Cullen.

So she missed the way his face fell, and how he had to force himself to straighten after she spoke her request. She missed the sad look on his face when he bowed, and how he looked at her mournfully as she climbed up into the small loft in her room, to wait until Dorian was here to sing stupid Tevinter lullabies at her until she could trust herself to sleep without concern for demons clawing up out of the Fade.

She missed a lot of things.

But she could endure that, too.


	12. The Offerance

Dorian came quickly, climbing the stairs up to her loft and enveloping her in a tight hug. She made token protestations, but they were just that. There was no feeling behind them as he, again, came to her rescue, smoothing her hair and muttering Tevene at her. She spoke only in Dalish, telling him everything that hurt and feeling safe that he could not understand it, even with the Dalish he had been learning. Their language was one that took years to master, because of their blended word system.

Still, she spoke her sadness, and he comforted her in hushed Tevene, soothing her down into sleep after he set ward spells all around them and buried them both in blankets. Aurum did not want to sleep, the irrational fear of the demon coming back for her in the Fade-sleep, but her body was exhausted and sleep eventually won her over, regardless.

* * *

She woke up in the protective circle of Dorian’s arm, buried under the blankets he had pulled up around her. There was an uncomfortable crick in her neck, but Aurum would take some muscle tension over the nightmares. The Tevinter was reading in the morning’s light with some assistance from a summoned mage light, and clearly had no problem with one of his arms being usurped for use as a sub-par pillow for a mage currently frightened of her own shadow.

Aurum half-considered feigning sleep for a while longer. She did not particularly relish the idea of waking up and having to handle dealing with everyone who would undoubtedly have something to say about the great Inquisitor nearly getting possessed by a desire demon because she was too fucking happy to see someone who could have been from her dead Clan. There would be _stares_ and _looks_ and _whispers_ that followed her, now that she had shown her weakness. They would…

“Aurum, I know you’re awake, you little cheater. Don’t try and make me stay like this any longer. The velvet on my robe is already ruined thanks to you.”

“Oh my gods, go fuck yourself Dorian,” she growled, punching towards what she hoped was his thigh.

He grunted, but had no other response for her. Snarky or otherwise. Which was odd, for the Tevinter. He would have usually snapped something about how he was the only one around worth fucking or _something_ snappish. Carefully, Aurum twisted herself so that she could look up at her friend.

A desire demon leered down at her, its teeth sharp and glinting. The comforting arm turned hard and bony and chains wrapped around her, holding her down, pinning her in place, keeping her from being able to escape –

* * *

“Aurum! Aurum, please, calm down. It is okay.”

She thrashed, reaching blindly for the dagger she kept beneath her bedside table. Her hand hit stone instead, and then, in short order, cracked against something softer, that yelped and drenched her hand in something warm and sticky.

Aurum fell backwards, away and out of the warmth of the blanket pile, her hand slick with blood.

“Fucking _venhedis_ , ow!”

She blinked, and light assaulted her vision. Aurum turned to Dorian, who was clutching his very broken nose and leaning forward, holding his book out of the gouts of blood that now leaked from his face. Aurum looked down at her hand, saw blood on it, and her mind finally put everything together.

“Oh, _Creators_ , I’m so sorry Dorian! I’m so sorry, I didn’t think, oh I’m so sorry, let me – I can fix it, I’m so sorry,” she babbled, crawling back to him, her hands wreathed in soft, pale green.

The healing was over in a matter of seconds, as it was always, but still, Aurum fretted over him, her fingers pressing to his nose, his cheeks, down his face, tracing the lines of blood that followed the curve of his face. She was still murmuring apologies in Dalish as she went on, her hands shaking as she tried to make things better. She tried to tell him why she was so sorry, why she had hit him, trying to find a way to tell him why she had done something so awful as to _hurt_ him.

“Aurum, Aurum, hush, come now, hush.”

Dorian gathered her into his arms and held her close, petting her hair and trying to do his best to calm her down. She had started shaking again, trembling like a frightened doe, and she could barely draw in a breath without a whine or whimper coming out on the exhale. He had to assure her that he understood what had happened and why.

Aurum curled into him, trying to hide away from everything while her emotions settled again. Dorian stayed still and allowed her to talk at him, only interjecting when he thought her panic was rising too high to be safe for her. No one came to knock at the door to call for her, and all the while, Dorian comforted her. It took her hours, it seemed, for everything inside of her to settle down again and her stammer to die out completely and for her words to gain true coherency again.

“I’m so sorry, Dorian. I did not mean to. The…I had a dream, right before I woke up. The demon was wearing your face and I…I was scared. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t fret, Aurum. I know how it goes. I’m happy you only punched me, even if you did manage to put a crimp in my moustache.”

Aurum snorted, and butted her head against Dorian’s cheek. It was an affectionate gesture, but not an intimate one. She had exchanged thousands of similar motions with the others in her Clan in her youth and – _oh no, oh no no no no oh if he takes it wrong, how will I explain_ – but Dorian chuckled and pressed back, returning the motion. She sighed happily, and pulled away, smiling slightly. That was one good thing, at least. She had someone to rely on.

“Thank you, Dorian. For all of this. I…I had not…this is the first time a desire demon has managed to tempt me so. I did not think it would affect me this deeply.”

“Desire is as old as Fear. They are not hard to dissuade, once there is an opening. This one just was cleverer than most. The scars will fade, and with it, the sharpness of the fear Desire is bringing you. Alternatively, you could go find someone to fuck your silly little brains out of those pointy little ears of yours.”

The Inquisitor blushed a shade of crimson that damn near matched the colors of the horrid jackets Josephine had made everyone else wear at the Winter Palace and punched Dorian in the thigh.

“What _ever_ was that for, Inquisitor?” Dorian asked ruefully, rubbing his bruised shoulder with a pout.

“You are an absolute terror, Pavus. What am I going to do with you?”

She shook her head, but did not move away from him, curling closer for just a few more moments of comfort before she had to be up and act as Inquisitor again. Dorian accepted her need for physical contact and pulled her closer to him, encircling her in the safety of his arms and a weak, but still sense-able warding spell. Aurum sighed, pleased with the comfort.

“You could always shower me in gold and the finest wines, bequeath a sizeable portion of land to me and -”

“Right, right, I get it Dorian. I’ll have Josephine hunt down that wine you love so much so you have something to drink while you moon out of the window at Bull in the training yard.”

It was his turn to shove at her good-naturedly, and she half-laughed at the movement. He looked ridiculous, with his clothes rumpled and his hair mussed and him still half-buried under all the blankets she had not had on her bed. Just to irritate him, she leaned over and ruffled his hair, messing it up as much as she could in as short a time as possible. He squawked and swatted her hands away, hurriedly trying to fix his hair.

Aurum smirked at him before vaulting the banister and dropping down onto the main floor of her bedroom. Her bed was ruined, and she would have to clean, scrub, and re-organize the entirety of her living area in order to try and wipe out the memory of the fucking demon holding her down to the bed and _whispering_ things at her. She shook her head, not wanting to think about any of that just yet.

She got dressed quickly, as Dorian untangled himself from the morass of blankets, sweeping her hair back into a single, long braid. Her hair was starting to get nearly unmanageably long, but she could trim it up later. For now, she had things to do. Stuff to busy herself with. Anything to keep her mind away from what had happened the night before. The Inquisitor’s hands should not shake in the presence of those she did not trust completely. Any sign of weakness would reflect…poorly upon the Inquisition as a whole, and Aurum could not allow the power she had only just managed to begin to obtain to slip through her fingers so easily.

“Aurum, a moment before you go.”

Dorian walked up behind her, smoothing his hands over his robes and combing his hair back into something of a proper order.

“Yes?”

“The Commander was shaken last night. Deeply. I think it would be best if you went to talk with him about it as well. Undoubtedly Leliana and Josephine have been spinning tales hither and thither to disguise what actually happened, but the Commander…when he came to find me, it looked as if he had been mulling over something particularly painful.”

Aurum bit her lip and looked away. She did not want to talk to Dorian about why she could not do that right away. She did not want to talk to Cullen about the demon taking his face and how that had made her feel and how it made her feel to realize that the demon had to take his face in order to even come close to actually possessing her.

“Aurum. It is important. Go talk to Cullen. I am not going to rest well until you and he have talked. It was a bad night for both of you.”

“Dorian, please-”

“I’m not hearing any arguments, Aurum. None at all. You are going to go talk to the Commander, or I will not give you a moment of rest. And I will help myself to all of your mead. And be a right bloody botherance, until you _talk_ to him about what happened. You realize he probably blames himself, yes?”

Aurum sighed.

“Dorian, yes I know, but-”

“No, Aurum. Go talk to him.”

She swallowed the lump in her throat. How was she even supposed to start the conversation with _Cullen_ if she could not even bring it up with _Dorian_?! But she nodded at him, acquiescing to his request. He smiled wanly at her, and Aurum left, cinching her belt tight around her middle and trying to calm the nerves that were already clawing at the back of her throat. She would go speak with Cullen as soon as possible. It was really the only way to get her nerves to settle down.

Her hands were shaking.

Her hands should not shake.

* * *

“Inquisitor? If you are looking for the Commander, he’s gone to speak with Seeker Pentaghast in the armory.” 

Aurum blinked, and looked to the soldier. Why would Cullen…she knew he and Cassandra were close, given their history. She knew that Cassandra had recruited Cullen and that there were oftentimes that the two of them would clear out the upper floor of the tavern in order to talk with each other, but Aurum could not think of any reason that this page would know this information.

“I see. Thank you,” she responded politely, inclining her head in a dismissal of the messenger.

The nerves only shook her harder. Something was wrong, that much was easily apparent. There was an odd scent on the air, if she cared to notice it. She was so consumed with her riotous thoughts as she walked, that she did not hear whatever argument Cassandra and Cullen were having. She only caught the tailmost end of it as she entered the smithy’s forge. Cullen was mid-sentence, but the squeal of the door alerted him, and he stopped whatever it was he was snarling at the Seeker.

He looked at her, and Aurum could only see an animal with its leg caught in a trap. Something was wrong. She shared the feeling, but had no idea where it had come from.

“Command-”

“Forgive me,” was all he said, and then he was brushing past her, leaving her standing, confused, next to Cassandra.

“And people say _I’m_ stubborn. Maker preserve us, this is ridiculous.”

Aurum looked to Cassandra, a question already half-on her lips.

“Cullen told you he’s no longer taking lyrium?”

_Well then, by all means, get right to the point, Cassandra._

“Yes? It is the right choice.” Aurum offered, her mind still abuzz with everything that had gone on in such a short period of time.

Honestly, she had no idea where this conversation was going, but Cassandra did not seem as if she were upset with the fact that their Commander was no longer bound by the addictive substance, but, rather, proud. At least she and Cassandra could agree on this.

“I agree. Not that he is willing to listen. He has asked that I find a replacement for him. I refused. It is not necessary. Besides, it would destroy him.”

Aurum nodded. Cullen had told her that much, already. She knew to trust Cassandra’s judgment on the matter, regardless. Cassandra was probably the sort of person that Aurum should fear more so than Templars – Seekers had the strength of Templars, but not the weaknesses. But Cassandra never hunted mages, so that was a point in the favor of Seekers like her.

“I see. Why didn’t he come to me when the symptoms started? I asked him to. I could have eased the pain…”

“I do not believe he would want to…risk your disappointment,” Cassandra said delicately.

Clearly, the Seeker knew something of the tension between the two of them, or, if nothing else, had guessed at it. Aurum bit her tongue to keep from spilling secrets out over the dirt-covered floor.

“Do you think it would be helpful if I talked to him? To try and convince him that this is not the right path?”

“If anyone could do such a thing, it would be you. Templars have never been open about their suffering. They are bound to the Order, mind and soul, with someone always holding the lyrium leash. Cullen has a chance to break that leash, to prove to himself that it _is_ possible.”

Aurum nodded.

* * *

Slowly, she walked up to Cullen’s room, avoiding the main part of the keep and all the people in it. She did not want to see anyone else, or hear her. This was something intensely personal, and with Dorian’s chastisement ringing in her ears, she did not want to bother anyone else with her own problems either. But she had to talk with Cullen.

Before she opened the door to his study, Aurum took a deep, deep breath in, trying to center her emotions so that she would not collapse into a neurotic mess the moment he looked at her. Her hand hovered on the door handle for a heartbeat longer, and then she opened it, an apology already on her lips.

But a wooden box nearly smacked her in the face and she ducked just barely out of the way, the whole contraption falling to pieces at her feet. Startled she looked down at the wreckage, trying to figure out what it was, only to see the half-familiar glow of lyrium in one of the vials. That was the Templar lyrium-kit. Shattered, in pieces, at her feet.

“ _Maker’s breath_! I did not hear you enter! I – _forgive_ me, Inquisitor.”

Aurum snapped her attention to Cullen, and even if she had _not_ been trained from a very young age to recognize when someone was hurting or ill, it would have been obvious that something was wrong with the Commander. He was pale, and sweat dotted his brow.

“Cullen, do you need…to talk?” she offered, passing across the threshold of the doorway.

“You don’t have to-”

He stumbled, reaching for his desk and groaning, but Aurum was already holding him up, crossing the distance between the two of them in a burst of a Fade-step, catching his weight as if it was nothing. On instinct, she pressed a hand to his forehead, then against one of his ears. His skin was slick with sweat, and fever-hot. Aurum hissed a curse under her breath in Tevene as she held him. She needed –

“I never meant for _this_ to interfere,” Cullen grit out as she helped him find his balance so she could step away.

He still clutched for the edge of his desk, leaning on it heavily. Aurum watched warily, her mind spinning madly as she tried to figure the best way to get someone to bring her her apothecarist’s satchel and some water. She could fix this, she could help him through this, but she needed a few moments to gather her things. If he had just _told her_ , she could have come prepared.

“Cullen, are you going to be alright?”

“Yes,” he answered, too quickly. After a moment, though, the statement was amended to “…I don’t know.”

She blinked, her ears twitching briefly. If she could just get him to sit down for five minutes, she could run, grab what she needed, and be back here in time to be of assistance. She might even be able to ask Cassandra what the prevailing symptoms of lyrium withdrawal were, and figure out how to treat them. If she had had more _time_ , she would have had something prepared for it.

“You never asked me what happened in Ferelden’s Circle.”

Aurum turned her attention back to him, confused as t where this was going. She had never asked, because it had not been important to her. He had gotten all growly and gruff when she had even shown the slightest bit of curiosity about his past, and she had rather figured that had meant she should never bring it up, so she had not. She knew what had happened, told to her by others and written in tales and books, and if Cullen had not wished to speak of it, she would have never considered it something to question him about.

“I did not want to pry. You made it clear that that sort of thing was not something you wished to discuss. I…wanted to be respectful of that much, at least.”

“It was taken over by abominations. The Templars – my _friends_ – were slaughtered.”

Her stomach dropped. That part of the story, she knew, but to hear how he still spoke of it told her there were only worse things to come out of his mouth. She stayed quiet.

“I was tortured. They tried to break my mind and I-” he laughed, a self-loathing sound that made her hair stand on end. “ – How can you be the same person after that?”

She stayed quiet. This was not a moment to interfere or interject. She needed to listen, because he needed to talk.

“Still, I wanted to serve. They send me to Kirkwall. I trusted my Knight-Commander, and for what? Her fear of mages ended in madness.”

Aurum winced. The pain that had been in the “I’m _not_ a Templar anymore” had been more than just the dislike of being misrepresented, she was quickly learning. She had treated Cullen poorly, but not without reason. To hear his voice break over this though…it did make her heart ache in ways she had hoped would never come to fruition.

“Kirkwall’s Circle fell. Innocent people died in the streets. Can’t you see why I want nothing to do with that life?”

He looked to her, wanting an answer.

“Of course I can, Cullen. I-”

“ **Don’t**.”

He cut her off so abruptly that she was honestly taken aback, and nearly took a step away from him. He turned to his bookshelf, walking towards it, and Aurum followed a few paces behind. Close enough to be helpful, but far enough away so that she would not crowd him.

“You should be _questioning_ what I’ve done. I thought this would be better, that I would regain some control over my life. But these _thoughts_ won’t _leave_ me.”

Aurum could nearly taste the despair and desperation in his voice, in how it cracked around a promise he felt like had broken with his own weakness already. He paced in front of her, back and forth and back and forth, and she **knew** , she _knew_ that this was a panic attack. It was panic and fear and anger and it was held too close to his heart for her to help just yet. Poison trapped in a scar, bleeding out just enough to make him hurt.

“How many lives _depend_ on our success? I swore myself to this cause, and I will **not** give less to the Inquisition than I did the Chantry. I should be taking it!”

He swung, his fist hitting the bookshelf hard enough to make it splinter. Aurum’s ears flicked back against her skull at the sound, but she did not flinch away from him.

“I should be taking it,” he said softly, resigned.

Aurum closed the distance between her and him then, placing her hand over his fist and coming close enough that she could see shadows beneath his eyes and the pain that touched his brow. Gently, her other hand came up to rest on his shoulder, and she stood, fearlessly in the most dangerous place for a mage to be – next to a (ex-)Templar.

“Cullen, this is not about the Inquisition. It is about you. Your life, and your choices. Is this what you want?”

He looked at her for a moment, his eyes still wide and pupils still constricted. Again, she thought about how if he had just _told_ her, she could have helped and kept it from getting to this point, but the thoughts were unimportant to the reality. He was hurting and she was going to help him.

“No. I don’t want it.”

Slowly, he pulled his hand away from the shelf and Aurum released her hold on him. She watched him carefully, her head moving with his so she could watch for any moment where his emotions started spiraling again. Aurum did not move away from him, not stepping away from him more than was necessary to maintain a veneer of professionalism. She was here for him, in every sense of the word.

“But…these memories have always haunted me – if they become worse, if I cannot endure this…”

“We are stronger together, than we are alone. Cullen, you _can_. Just let me be with you. We can do this.”

He blinked at her, slowly realizing what she was saying. She did not move away from him as she spoke, and Cullen relaxed into her touch. He was starved for touch, and being offered it when he was vulnerable was impossible for him to resist.

“All right,” he conceded after a long while.

Aurum sighed, shaking her head. She could have, should have done something different. Even if she disregarded what had happened the night before – the thing that likely triggered this attack, if she had understood the sorts of stories that had been told about Kinloch Hold correctly - this sort of thing was still under her command and control. She had failed him.

“Up, to bed, Commander. You need rest. Now. I will have one of the pages bring me my accoutrements.”

“…What?”

“To bed, **now** , Commander. I will see that your schedule is cleared. You are still our War Leader, and I did tell you that I would take care of you when this got bad. It got bad. Now I am going to take care of you. Get out of your armor, and get to bed. I will have food brought, because I do not think you’ve eaten, and you need to keep your strength.”

“Inquisitor,” he started, trying to pull himself up to his full height, and quailing beneath the weight of his armor.

“I am brokering no arguments. Either you get yourself up that ladder, or so help me, I will carry your blond ass up there myself.”

He gaped at her.

“You must be joking. I have wo-”

“If you say one thing about the paperwork on your desk, I will set it all on fire. Get to bed. Now.”

Cullen stared for a moment in disbelief, before breaking out in soft laughter. He reached up to rub the back of his neck, and looked at her out of the corner of his eye, assessing her from that new angle.

“Maker, I do believe you would.”

“Quite.”


	13. The Dreaming

She climbed up the ladder to his private room, checking to make sure, for the umpteenth time, that she had all the herbs she needed, and the clay jar full of soup and the pot she would use to heat the soup and everything else she needed.

Sighing, she stepped up onto the second floor, checking everything just one more time. Just once again, for good measure.

“ _O-oh_. Aurum, I didn’t – I did not think you were serious.”

Cullen’s voice drew her attention, and she looked up, only to catch sight of the broad expanse of Cullen’s naked chest. Scars stippled his body, but he had the sort of muscle definition that had made the other women in her Clan tremble. Her hands still shook, and that was not at all the same thing. Dully, she was aware that she was staring but in her defense it was _insanely_ difficult to look away from all that…muscle.

“I…of course I was serious. Your health is an important matter to me. Lay down, please. You need to sleep, and when you wake, I’ll see that you eat.”

She licked her lips as he turned. It was a nervous motion, not anything more or less than that. Aurum could ignore the way his eyes dipped to her lips, or how his tongue peeked out to press against his fucking _scar_. She mirrored his movement, and even though she had no scarred lip to press against, it was enough to get her to blush.

She shook her head and took a deep breath. If she was going to act as Keeper, she needed to act as Keeper.

“Bed, please, Cullen.”

He smirked at her (the scar moved and twisted and crinkled and she really wanted to press her face against it) and humored her, though there was little actual happiness in the movements. Cullen did not think much of whatever was going on, until he was in bed, and she climbing in as well, making herself comfortable at the head of the bed, sitting prettily before gently pulling his head into her lap. She set the bowl to the side of them, crushing herbs into it with a half-heard hum emanating from somewhere deep in her chest. She crushed the herbs into a fine powder with just her fingers, not minding the way Cullen fidgeted in her lap, uncomfortable with the closeness.

“Aurum, what are you-”

“Hush, Cullen. Do you trust me?”

He blinked quickly, staring up at her as she looked down at him. She was a mage, sitting in his bed, his head in her lap. A mage who had entertained inappropriate thoughts of, a mage who lead the Inquisition, a mage who had gotten on all of his nerves at one time or another, but…

“I-yes. I do. Trust you.”

“For the sake of what I am doing, I will ignore the fact that you sound unsure. I am going to help you get to sleep, and then maintain watch as you sleep. Part of withdrawal comes with severe nightmares, as I’m sure you know, as well as pain, both psychosomatic and physical. I will be helping with that as well. This is part of the reason why I wanted you to come to me as soon as it started to get bad. It works better, longer, if I am here at the beginning of it.”

“But-”

“Cullen. Hush.”

Every time he tried to wiggle, she would hold him still with a single hand on his jaw and a chiding tap on his chin. When the herbs were a fine powder, she added some oil from the flask at her hip, sketching runes and sigils into the oil as she mixed it. There was no real magic in what she was doing right yet, just a ritual tradition. As soon as the herbs were completely mixed into the oil and her fingers were starting to tingle pleasantly from the interactions of all the herbs working together. She rubbed her fingers together to warm the oil and smiled down at Cullen, who was looking up at her with worry in his golden eyes.

“Au-”

“Hush. Sleep. I’m going to keep watch over you while you dream and nothing bad will come to you. You need to sleep, Cullen.”

Magic whispered in the air, and Cullen tensed, his headache suddenly white-hot behind his eyes. He made a sound of distress, and Aurum was immediately attuned to him, stopping her magic and shifting herself so that she was closer to him, her fingers pressing gently against his temples. If he leaned up even the slightest bit he could brush her nose with his own. He was staring at her mouth, her lips, and the quick, hesitant lick she gave to them.

His skin was cold to the touch, and slick with sweat. He groaned as the headache flared with more pain, but then she was rubbing over where the hurt was and muttering apologies at him. She smoothed oil across his brow and cheeks, gently massaging it into his skin until the pain began to fade.

“Hush, hush, it’s okay. I know, it was too loud. Shhh, it’ll be softer this time. Quiet, quiet, atisha, atisha, da’mi, nuvenin numin, hush,” she murmured, her fingers rubbing soothing circles where the pain from the withdrawal was the worst.

The oil had the desired effect, bolstered by magic so tightly controlled it was quiet even to his hyper-sensitive Templar sense. The oils made him feel drowsy, and he wasn’t certain that was what he wanted, but she had told him to sleep, and that seemed like such a good idea. She was touching him, rubbing circles and patterns against his skin, humming her words at him, and Cullen could only stare, his eyes halfway open, up at her.

“Dareth, da’mi. Dirth ar mavir. Da’mi, atisha,” Aurum hummed, her voice dropping low to be as soothing as the oils she was rubbing against his skin.

Cullen made a soft sound under his breath, flinching awake as he started to drift into sleep. He tried to rise up, but Aurum pressed a slick hand against his chest and gently pushed him back down flat. His struggle was momentary as she rubbed soft circles against his sternum. He could not think of anything but her fingers on his flesh and how they made him feel and if she insisted, he could comply. With a sigh, he relaxed into sleep, falling deep into the dream-Fade without another sound.

“Hussshhhh, da’mi. Hamin'era, hush.”

Her magic, kept on a tight enough leash to not leak out to be “loud”, slowly worked into the oils, following the whorls and spirals she had drawn, leeching in through the paths the herbs had taken. She dipped both of her hands into the oil, and then drew patterns matching what Cullen had on her own flesh, letting the resonance of the herbs and her magic draw her down as it had done to him. Aurum bent her back in a deep bow, tucking her chin in to her chest so she could rest her forehead against Cullen’s.

He slept, and dreamed.

Above him, chanting and focused on the intricacies of forcing magic to be quiet as it worked, still rubbing circles on his chest was Aurum.

* * *

Darkness and fear dominated his dreamscape. He was held as he had been back in Ferelden, bound and taunted and teased and tempted and _tortured_.

« _This is not real, Cullen. You know it is not. Let it go._ »

He blinked, looking to his right. A pale white, glowing wolf sat beside him, far larger than any beast had any right to be. Its shoulders came to his hips, and while its mouth did not move, he knew the voice came from it.

Mages – blood magic!

He moaned. They had gotten him, he had failed somehow. The mages had rebelled, they should have killed them all, the Right of Annulment that the Hero of Ferelden had denied him the ability to use.

« _Cullen, you know me. I am here to help you. I promised to help you. This is not blood magic. This is a dream. One you do not need to have._ »

He heard his brothers and sisters screaming as the abominations tore into them. He was weak, he had failed them, they were – if he just took the lyrium he would be strong enough to protect them this time. To protect them all. The Inquisito-

« _CULLEN._ »

The wolf gently bit his hand, hard enough that he could feel its teeth, but not enough to break skin. The reminder was gentle, as gentle as he could expect from a wolf.

« _Cullen. Release yourself. You are the only one holding on. Move from this dream. The Fade is so much more beautiful than this darkness. Forgive yourself._ »

But he had –

« _You failed no one. You did more than anyone could have ever asked for. Your bravery saved the Hero of Ferelden. Without you, she would not have known what to expect. Aislinn Cousland owes you a debt, and while she would never call it, you must know that just because she disagreed does not mean she does not know the suffering you went through, nor does she decry you for what you had to do._ »

But –

« _Cullen. Please. You are more than this moment. Do not let these creatures win by letting them carve your scars open every night._ »

The wolf looked up at him, with eyes as blue as lyrium, but cut through with a vivid purple. Wide and trusting, those eyes could never lie to him. The wolf sat, very still at his feet, ears pointed up towards him, and head cocked to the side. The howling of the Fade did not interest it, only Cullen did. Its tail thumped happily on the ground when he reached for it, ignoring the chains that had held him tight. The press of his hand to the cloud-soft fur on its head felt real.

« _Will you walk with me, please?_ »

Where would they walk? What was there, other than this darkness?

« _Look again, Cullen. There is something else here._ »

He searched, and as his eyes adjusted, he saw a glimmer of light far in the distance. It was almost too far away to even consider, but as soon as he had seen it, he wanted to be _near_ it.

Could they go there?

« _This is your dream. We can go there right now._ »

Good. He wanted to be there. He wanted the light, instead of this darkness.

« _Then we shall go_.»

The wolf stood, and began to walk towards the thin shining point in the darkness. Cullen reached to lay a hand on the beast again, and the wolf felt so **happy** at that contact that he could not think to move his hand away. The light came closer, and the happiness mellowed into peace so deep and suffusing that all the worries that plagued him merely…fell away. The wolf guided him, and he followed.

* * *

He awoke to the light of the sun setting over the horizon. The headache that had plagued him was gone, and while his mouth felt mealy and, to put it frankly, gross, he no longer felt like he was going to break open the lyrium vial with his teeth just to lick blood and lyrium out of it. Aurum was still bowed over him, her lips moving over hymns in a language he did not speak. She emanated magic, soothing waves of it that he –

“Aurum?”

She blinked her eyes open and he was staring into the very depths of her soul, it seemed. Her eyes were bright, shining purple ringed in blue that rivaled the color of the sun on the clearest, brightest day. No gem, no precious thing could ever compare to her eyes. His breath caught in his throat, and he had to swallow the sudden knot that had blossomed.

The hum of her chanting and the gentle pulse of soft, quiet magic faded. Slowly, she straightened her back, grimacing as she discovered which muscles she had aggravated by choosing that particular position. Her back popped and cracked as she arched and twisted, and eventually, she looked back to him.

“Yes, Cullen? Are you hungry?”

He shook his head, paused, and then nodded. Cullen could not look away from her, not yet.

“Okay, lay still, I’ll prepare the food. Does loud-magic still give you a headache?”

She slowly unfolded her legs from beneath his head, edging to the closest side of the bed and gently rising up out of it, careful not to jostle him too much.

“Loud-magic?” he inquired, trying to sit up to follow her movements.

Oil-slick fingers pushed him gently back down, and Aurum chided him gently with a cick of her tongue. She ignored the way her fingers trembled, or lingered on his chest, tracing the line of his muscles before she drew away from him, licking her lips again.

“You need to stay still, alright Cullen? I will make the meal. It is just soup, something light so that you don’t make yourself ill.”

“Aurum, what did you…do?”

“Quiet magic. It’s very difficult. I just needed,” she stumbled over her own feet, trying to catch her breath as the exhaustion hit her all at once. Her hands started to shake all over again. “ _Shit_. I just needed a moment, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry Commander. I should have been better at this than I was. For you.”

A good half of what she was saying was utterly lost on him, but he could see her trembling. She was pale and tired, but she was already straightening her back and reaching for the next task she needed to accomplish. She was _Aurum_ , First of Lavellan, and she could handle this. She could do this for him.

“Aurum? You’re shaking.”

“Y-yes. My apologies. I shouldn’t…I…it’s nothing, give me a moment and I-I’ll-”

His arms wrapped around her, and gently, gently, pulled her back to his bed. Aurum made a protesting sound beneath her breath, but Cullen pulled insistently, and she collapsed into the bed, fumbling to keep the bowl of oil from upsetting itself all over his sheets. He chuckled at her insistence for him to let her up, dammit.

“ _Cullen_ , be reasonable. You need to eat, and then rest, to recover. Let me up.”

“ _Aurum,_ you need to be reasonable, too. You are exhausted. Let me help.”

She struggled weakly, pushing back when he pushed her down. It was hard working against a man who had just slept _very_ well, when she had been focusing so intently on making sure he had slept that well. She was exhausted, and even the incidental contact with the oil she had made to lull him into sleep was starting to work its soporific effects on her.

It did not help when he flipped her onto her back, holding the bowl of oil out of her reach and pressing a hand in between her shoulder blades to keep her in place. She snarled her objection, but then he was pressing an oil-slick hand beneath her tunic, up against her back, and strumming his callous-rough fingers across her muscles. Aurum’s breath caught, and the next strum had her groaning into his pillows, clutching them around her face and trying to muffle the sounds.

Creators _damn him_ he was good at this. She pushed herself up with one arm, and he easily, so fucking _easily_ pushed her back down and pressed his thumb along the curve of her spine. She whimpered and the resistance drained from her. She wished, idly that he was not so good at this, so that she could go back to complaining, but the combination of the oil she had made and the way Cullen’s fingers rubbed across her back quickly had her slipping into a hazy sort of half-sleep.

She was pliant when he pulled the blankets of his bed up to her chin, and made token protestations when he shushed her and pulled her boots off without disturbing the covers. The oil had seeped too far into her skin for movement to even be half of an option, and she could feel the Fade reaching out for her. For a brief, brief second, she felt the panic from the night before rising in her throat, and she tensed, trying to think through what she could do to protect herself from the nightmares. It was different with Dorian. He knew what to expect, what to look for, how to handle a mage who was terrified of what the Fade could bring while they slept, but Cullen –

Lay next to her, reaching out with arms that were as warm as the sunlight that was waning in the distance, and Aurum growled something obscene about impropriety and his stupid Burned Woman and something else that she was certain was _absolutely scathing_ but Cullen just huffed and pulled her close to him, smoothing her hair with one hand and using the other to pull some of the blankets back onto his side of the bed.

Aurum tried to form a reason why they should not sleep in the same bed: it was improper, they had not even _fucked_ and they had moved straight to cuddling what sort of bullshit was that even, he was going to be too warm and she’d wake up sweaty and not even the fun sort of sweaty, he was still in the middle of withdrawal, she had not finished with what she had been meaning to do, he smelled…really nice, even though she was certain most of the smell was the oil she had used, he had rubbed her back until she felt languid and loose, her eyes were already drifting shut, he was murmuring something soft and sweet at her, his thumb just barely brushed her ear and she was, after all, so very comfortable…

* * *

He woke up alone the next morning, well-rested, yes, but starving. From down in his office below, he could hear someone shouting down a messenger as quietly as possible. The messenger clearly was not getting the point, which heralded his opponent kicking him backwards and shutting the door. Cullen heard his lock click and laughed to himself, rising up out of his bed and heading towards the ladder. It was probably good for him to start getting ready, anyway. He was certain the paperwork he needed to do numbered in the hundreds of reports, and there was certainly no harm in him going down and working through everything that had piled up.

“No, you don’t. Get back in bed, Cullen. I just managed to scare off the last of the…what is that in your hand?”

Aurum had come up the ladder faster than he had expected, consumed with scolding him back into bed, but had stopped short, staring down at his left hand. He followed her gaze down to his hand. He was holding something. Something that glowed blue against his fingers. When had he –

“Cullen. Give that to me. Now.”

“I don’t remem-”

“Give it to me, _now_.”

She held her hand out to him, palm up, open and demanding. But he did not want her to have it. He needed it, he needed to have it, that was why he had gotten up in the night, when she had been deep in the dream-Fade, and walked to where his kit had shattered to retrieve the only thing in there that had really mattered at all. Now she wanted it back.

“Aurum, please, I did-”

“Commander Cullen Stanton Rutherford, you will give that vial of lyrium to me. Right. Now.”

There was a bite, a command in her tone that had him moving to comply without further argument. He put the vial in her hand, and she put that vial into one of her many pockets, huffing something under her breath that he could not catch. The enormity of what he had nearly done hit him all at once and he started shaking, staring down at the hand that had brought him so close to ruination. He could have drank it, taken it, at any moment during the night. He knew he had not done so, because his blood was still burning for the want of it, but he _could have_ and he would not have even been in control of it.

“I-I’m sorry, Inquisitor. I don’t remember, I did not mean-”

“Hush, Cullen. It is alright. I do not blame you, you did nothing wrong. I am sorry for speaking so harshly to you. It is not your fault. Please, get back to bed. You need your rest, still. Does magic hurt your senses? I would like to heat up the soup.”

He blinked at her as she moved back towards his bed, already moving to the next item on her list. Why was _she_ apologizing? He was the one who had nearly fucked everything up. He had nearly done what she had asked him not to. The Inquisitor had made her position clear. He was not to take lyrium. The Inquisition demanded that of him. The Chantry gave him the lyrium, and now the Inquisition would -

“Cullen? Are you…well?”

Instinctively, his hand went to the back of his neck, and he shrank away from her, ashamed at what he had almost done. She kept stopping his thoughts in their track, and while he was certain it was for a reason, it made it very difficult for him to -

“Cullen, please, look at me.” She reached out and gently touched his cheek, turning his head so that if he could not meet her eyes, he still had to regard her presence. The movement was more intimate than he cared to admit. “You did not do anything wrong. I spoke too sharply, ma’abelas. Please, sit, I will make tea and soup for you. You look hungry, and I am certain you need to rest, regardless.”

“You did not do anything improper, Aurum. I-”

“Sit.”

She kept _cutting him off_ and not letting him finish his sentences, so of course the only recourse he had was to listen to her, and he ambled back to his bed, where he sat with a huff. The jug of soup was poured into a small earthen bowl and he could barely feel the whisper of her magic as she warmed both the soup and the bowl with her hands and nothing more. She held the bowl out to him, and he took it, gladly.

“There, that should be a good temperature. When you’ve eaten, I will return your favor from last night, and then leave you to sleep on your own this time.”

“What favo-”

“Eat, Cullen.”

The soup was light and thin, mostly broth and herbs, with very small pieces of what he hoped was chicken, because it definitely tasted like chicken. He ate voraciously, and when she handed him a chunk of bread that she tore from a loaf he swore she had not had in her hands moments before, he took it thankfully, dunking it into the broth and eating without much care for propriety. He was hungry. So very hungry.

She heated more soup when he was done with the first serving, taking the bowl he held out to her. Her fingers were cool against his own, and gentle in her movements. The bowl was returned to him, along with another chunk of bread, and he ate again, until his belly was full, and he felt drowsy again. He was starting to think that it, perhaps, had something to do with the herbs Aurum had added to the soup, but his mind was already bleary with the need to sleep and she was crushing new herbs into the bowl that had held oil already, working on a different concoction.

He rather wished he had paid more attention to his herbological training. He had to trust that Aurum meant no harm to him, and that these herbs were not slowly poisoning him. She was a mage, after all, and she could easily harm him with a whisper. But she did not. She took his bowl from his hands, setting it away, behind her, adding oil to the bowl and again, drawing her fingers through it to mix everything together.

“Lay on your stomach, please, Cullen. Ah, after you remove your shirt, if you please. It will make the work easier on me.”

Mystified, he complied. He trusted Aurum completely.

Shirt off, and lying on his bed (and not thinking about how his pillows now smelled of her, not at all), he waited for whatever would come. Oil-slicked hands pressed against _his_ back and suddenly he understood what favor Aurum insisted upon returning. Except –

“ _Maker’s breath_ , Aurum where did you learn this?”

“I was First of my Clan, Cullen. These sorts of things are within the purview of my training. Relieving muscle aches is pretty common tasks, and over the years, I’ve gotten…good at it.”

His response was an eager groan as her thumb dug into the knotted muscle just on either side of his neck. His back was slick, and the breeze that fluttered through his room from the open holes in his roof chilled him. He shivered, and while he could not tell whether it was from the unexpectedly pleasant feeling of Aurum expertly rubbing her hands across his skin, or from the cold, Aurum assumed it was due to the latter.

“Cullen, I would like your permission to warm the room. I will have the builders fix your roof within the week, but I do not want you getting a cold while you recover from this,” Aurum whispered in his ear, her breath hot against his neck.

Cullen stiffened, and then nodded, quickly. He did not think she was that close, but the realization made the whole massage that much more…touching. He had had massages before, some by trainers from the Templar Order, after he had overexerted himself as a younger man, and then…once by a very pretty Orlesian woman who he had been certain was not actually trained in massage, but rather in the bedroom arts and was just using the massage parlour as a front. This was neither. Both? Neither. It was Aurum, Inquisitor and Herald and _Maker_ , she was pressing her knuckles against his back, rubbing and kneading and pulling the tension out of him whether he wanted her to or not.

He tried to keep the obscene sounds that wanted to spill **out** of him **in** , but it was hopeless. Every time he thought he had a handle on things, she would hit another spot of soreness, of tightness, of _something_ , and his mouth would drop open and he would groan or moan or whatever it was that Varric’s stupid books called it when someone like him made sounds like that.

Aurum only chuckled once, because her fingers had found a nest of tension in his low back, and he had cursed floridly and at great length.

“Such a mouth on you, Commander. I would have _never_ guessed.”

For a moment, he thought he would manage to hide his blush because he was facedown on his own damned bed, but then she was giggling, and reaching up to tug on his ear.

“Creators, the tips of your ears turn the _cutest_ shade of red when you blush that hard, Cullen.”

Embarrassment flushed through him, and while he could not focus on it overmuch, as he was still being plied with a massage, he still heard Aurum’s delighted laugh as his blush deepened. Eventually, though, the embarrassment at making such sounds faded and he was lulled into a gentle sleep, his back finally clear of any tension. He was only vaguely aware of Aurum’s departure, and her hushed goodbye, but the one thing that did stick with him –

_She called my ears cute._


	14. The Spar

_Fucking hells I called his ears cute out loud. Even if he is a shem, he has to realize that’s weird for an elf to say. Fuck I am fucked._

Aurum snarled at herself, and then, for good measure, one of the pages that was waiting outside of Cullen’s door.

“The Commander needs his rest, and I swear if I find out that you or any of the other messengers, soldiers, or Advisors disturbed him before he was ready to wake up and address people of his own accord, I will hang you and anyone who disturbed him outside the gate of Skyhold by your ankles. In nothing but your smalls. Am I clear?”

“Y-y-y-y-yes, your Worship.”

She nodded.

“Good. Scuttle on, then.”

The poor page bolted, running for the safety of anywhere that Aurum wasn’t. Good plan, really. Aurum hiked her bag of herbs and assorted dirty dishes up over her shoulder and walked purposefully towards her rooms. She prayed that she would not encounter anyone on her journey. If she had been worried about the desire demon the day before, she was now focused solely on the fact that she might possibly have –

“There you are, dear.”

Her stomach dropped.

“Hello, Dorian,” she said, turning to the Tevinter with a wide, fake smile. He mirrored it, and her heart joined her stomach. He looked at her, peering closely at her face. Realization dawned in his eyes and Aurum looked quickly away.

“You did not talk to Cullen about what happened, did you?”

“There were other things that were more pressing. He needed something else. I will talk about it with him later.”

“It is a little late for that, isn’t it?”

She swallowed the lump in her throat, adjusted her bag on her shoulder, settled the bowl on her hip, and looked up at Dorian.

“I am certain I have no idea what you are talking about, Dorian.”

He chuckled at her, reaching out to take the bowl from her hands.

“Quite. There is elfroot in the garden that I need you to go pick. I need all of it for what I am working on. I uprooted the dawn lotus you had planted to make sure I could have enough of it.”

“Dorian, those plants are _very_ important, and you -”

“You promised you would talk to him about what happened. You gave me your word, Aurum. Now, the elfroot.”

Aurum felt like arguing the point, felt like trying to explain what had happened, why it was not appropriate for her to talk to Cullen at that moment, why she could not bring it up and feel like it was a good moment. But the words died in her throat. She had promised Dorian, and then not followed through on the promise. Instead, she had spent the night in Cullen’s bed, consumed with doing nothing more than making sure he was well.

And then she had gone and complimented his ears like some lovestruck little da’asha.

She blushed ferociously and looked down at Dorian’s boots.

“Oh-ho-ho, what is this? Our fearless Inquisitor is _blushing_. What ever did happen the whole long night that you were in his rooms, I wonder?”

Aurum bit her lip and looked up at him through her lashes with a grin.

“Nothing?”

“That sounded like a question, not a statement. Come on then, you should go put your things down, and then we can talk about _just_ what you got up to in our dear Commander’s rooms.”

She sighed mightily, rolling her eyes at him.

“Or, you could help me put these down, I will go pick your damned elfroot, and then you can spar me for the right to know what happened in the Commander’s rooms while I was tending to him.”

Dorian hummed under his breath as he walked alongside of her. His curiosity won out over the possibility of getting trounced by the Inquisitor. He wanted to know what had her blushing, and he wanted to make her say it because nothing was better than making the normally so very hard to read Dalish woman squirm. He had a feeling she needed to let loose anyway. Laugh, blush, giggle, feel like _herself_ again. Her entire Clan was gone, and while he did not know what that meant, other than that everyone she had grown up with was now dead, he knew that it was something that would weigh heavily on her.

So she would laugh, and spar.

“Fine then. You go put all your things away on your lonesome, and I’ll usurp the training arena from whoever is dithering about there.”

Aurum sighed, and nodded. She took her time in getting ready, changing out of the clothes she had been wearing for a full day, and into something that she could really _move_ in. Sparring was training, and training required light clothing. If you were going to make a mistake, it should _hurt_ to make it, so that it was not made again. There was no armor for her to wear that would match the sort of clothing she wanted to have on her at that moment, so she wore what she could find - a tunic without sleeves, belted loosely around her middle, knee-high boots, and trousers that fit comfortably around her hips.

She did not bother trying to re-braid her hair, and satisfied herself by brushing it out, then tying it up into a loose and sloppy bun, just to keep it off the back of her neck as she worked. Sparred, whatever. It would be work to spar with Dorian. But fun, regardless.

Rolling her shoulders and trying to loosen up before she went down to the trouncing-ground, Aurum did her best to stall, just to be that much more irritating. She still had to pick his elfroot for him, and so she meandered in that direction, planning to take her sweet-ass time with it all, because if Dorian was going to try and be obnoxious, she was going to be irritating back at him.

The earth was warm and wet, thanks to a few careful spells worked every morning by the herbologist, and Aurum harvested the elfroot that was ready to be used, carefully bundling it as best she could. This, incidentally, was better than Dorian ever managed to do, which was probably why he had cajoled her into doing it in the first place. Of course, she could have delegated the task to someone else, but Aurum did break her promise, so she should bear the consequences.

Elfroot obtained, and her muscles sufficiently loosened for the match, Aurum ambled to the place Dorian had asked her to meet him, ready to spar.

* * *

“Hey, Commander. You look lost.”

The Iron Bull, for being nearly seven and a half feet of Qunari, with horns out to _there_ , still, somehow, managed to be nearly silent when he wished to be. Cullen knew it was probably part of the Ben-Hassrath training that he had undergone, but it was still unnerving. Cullen had only just managed to get his feet underneath him and his armor back on so that he could tend to all the work he had been missing out on.

“I was looking for the Inquisitor. She had left something of hers in my office last night, and I was looking to return it.”

It was a bad lie, and Bull’s lone eye crinkled at the edges. The Qunari could of course see through the deception, but rather than bring up anything about the stupid lie, Bull nodded towards the library and rookery tower. Some things were better than just calling out a lie immediately. The more important question was why Cullen felt to lie about where and when Aurum was, and why he was looking for her now.

“She is probably looking over some of the old ‘Vint books with Dorian. The two of them are as thick as thieves more often than not. Come on, I needed to talk with the ‘Vint anyway. He owes me and the Chargers a round of drinks.”

Cullen really was not given a choice. Bull was going to come along with him, no matter what he said, and he could not rightfully try and pass off any sort of responsibility to Bull, regardless. The Iron Bull called the Inquisitor “Boss” and that was about the only other person Cullen had seen who could give suggested courses of actions to Bull or his Chargers and actually have them done without the Qunari staring the other person down.

So he nodded, and walked alongside Bull, or at least, he walked alongside Bull as much as someone can walk alongside another being with hornspan measured in feet through doors that were not _quite_ that wide. They made their way to the library with minimal botherances. Most of the pages and messengers were still uncomfortable with the Qunari. Might have something to do with the time where Bull threw one of them out of the Tavern and nearly broke a second messenger with the first.

Bull led them on a pretty wide path to the Library, something about wanting to check on Dalish as she practiced her “archery” in the garden, before finally heading up the tower to where Dorian and Aurum should be. Cullen could not hurry Bull along, despite his best efforts. Bull moved at his own pace, and would not be convinced to go any faster to get to the Library tower.

The two mages were not there by the time he and Bull arrived, and Bull hummed something under his breath before looking out the window and chuckling.

“Looks like the two twigs are going to beat the shit out of each other down there. ‘Vint versus the Boss. Man, this is a great view.”

Cullen peeked under Bull’s shoulder, and indeed, there was Dorian and Aurum facing off, holding matching staves down below. Aurum was barely wearing anything that could count as armor, and Dorian was already shirtless. They were talking amicably, circling each other as they readied themselves. Cullen had never had the opportunity to watch two mages actually spar before, and the anticipation of it had his gut clenching. She was beautiful already, but watching her ready herself for a spar made his heart race.

He missed whatever cue there was to begin, but it was clear something had come to pass, because both mages readied themselves simultaneously. Faster than he had seen her move, Aurum spun into the center of the circle, her stave slicing the air with the same sort of intensity he would have expected a swordsman to use. Dorian brought his own stave up to block, and the fight carried on.

“ _Damn_ , Boss looks good when she fights. I can’t usually appreciate how she moves when we’re fighting together, but this is completely different, isn’t it?”

Cullen had no response to that, swallowing down his comment. Aurum penetrated Dorian’s guard and with a twist, sent him flying, throwing him effortlessly to the ground. Dorian recovered quickly, and the fight continued, now at an advanced pace. They met, recoiled, and met again. Their speed only increased until they were at full combat speed, the staves whipping through the air at an astounding pace.

“Makes you wonder what she’d be like in bed, if she can move like that.”

Bull leered down at Cullen, who did his best to not blush. It took the Commander a few moments to recover, but in that small amount of time, Bull had already found something else to talk about, to Cullen’s eternal chagrin.

“Look at that snarl. She does that all the time when we’re fighting shit out there. Bares her teeth, _growling_ like some sort of feral thing. I don’t even think she knows she’s doing it. Bet she makes all sorts of crazy sounds if someone is treatin’ her right.”

 _She does,_ He thought.

She whimpered and whined and moved and moaned. She looked at him with adoration when he had nibbled at her ears and he wanted to do it again. Maker preserve him, he wanted it again. The sounds she made could make any man melt, but even remembering it made his knees go weak. She had pulled all sorts of sounds out of him as well, but the way she had arched into him and **keened** had stuck in his mind and he was only lucky in that he had not had a night to himself to think over what had happened.

Well, now he was thinking about it, anyway.

Cullen settled on a non-committal grunt, and made to turn away, but Bull put a companionable hand on his shoulder and turned him back to the window. He couldn’t pull away from Bull, and watching Aurum made it difficult to remember just what he wanted to do. Cullen bit the inside of his cheek and shuddered. Aurum had stripped her tunic and boots off in the brief interim of her and Dorian’s spar, leaving her only in a breast band and the trousers she had put on earlier. The Commander tried to look away, for properness' sake, but he really could not.

“You think she likes being held down? Pin those pretty little wrists of hers up over her head and take control and she’d probably melt. All the women like her usually do. Ah, but if not? She’s a mage. She could have you pinned down and trussed up with a flick of her wrist. If she ever gave control over to someone, it would be completely because _she_ wanted it to happen.”

“I don’t think-”

_I could hold her down. She’s so small, I could do it easily. It would not take any fucking strength to do it, either. If she was feeling firey, it would be easy to tie her down and keep her from using her magic. She’d spit and curse and writhe, but when they had argued before, when she had snarled and snapped it had only been moments and then…She had gasped and arched and whimpered in pleasure. I could pin her back to the War Table like before, bite those ears of hers, hold her close and –_

“I don’t think that this is a good conversation to have,” he grit out, reaching for the familiar presence of his sword’s hilt to balance himself.

This was not going any way like he thought it would. He was aching already, and he had barely managed to hold onto his composure so far. Bull was not helping at all, leering at Aurum, and then at Cullen in turn, saying things Cullen wished he would not because the words were worming their way into him and he was starting to think about them and that was not at al fruitful to the relationship he was meant to have with her.

“Boss can’t hear us up here, and it is fun to think about.” Bull sighed, “Look at **that** , she’s so flexible. Man, what I would not give to see if she could bend herself in half and grab her ankles while I -”

“Bull, please, not about her.”

“Suit yourself, Cullen. Phwoaar, look at _that_.”

Cullen certainly did not need Bull’s encouragement to stare down at Aurum. She was…beautiful.

Aurum spun, bending backwards to avoid Dorian’s strike, and then retaliated. The thin sheen of sweat on her skin made her glisten in the sunlight, and Cullen suddenly envied the Tevinter mage who was close enough to touch her, even if it was only in passing. Dorian looked up to the window for just a moment, and Bull grinned widely down at the mage. The look escaped both Aurum and Cullen’s notice. The plan was going _perfectly_.

Dorian charged her, wrapping his arms around her middle and driving her to the ground. Aurum dropped her weapon and immediately went to ground work. She wrapped her legs around his middle and twisted, pinning him underneath her before he fought back, planting his feet and thrusting his hips up to knock her grip on his shoulders loose. The two mages rolled around in the dirt, clouds of dust rising up around them both.

“Can you imagine sparring with her? She would wipe the floor with either of us. She’s a damned fright with that stave, and her hand-to-hand combat skills _clearly_ aren’t lacking. Oof, that _pin_ ,” Bull purred, not even really paying attention to Aurum and Dorian’s fight, just watching Cullen with a wolfish grin.

Cullen bit his lip. Aurum was straddling Dorian, holding his wrists above his head and snarling down at him. She was probably demanding quarter or something, but it did not matter, because Dorian was struggling and wriggling, trying to get out her grasp. Cullen’s mind unhelpfully substituted himself in Dorian’s place. There was a brief crack of magic through the air, and then Aurum was scrambling up and away, reaching backwards for her stave.

"Shit she is _fast_ on her feet. She adapts so quickly. Look at that. She was caught off guard and she already armed herself and has a barrier up. No one could stand a chance against her. Look at that. Fucking **look** at it. She’s ready for whatever he throws at her next, and – **damn** , look at her."

Bull sighed wistfully, watching as the fight continued. Cullen did not want to agree, but he could find no fault with what Bull was saying. It was all true. He had only ever seen Aurum fight when she was at a distinct disadvantage. Armorless against a horde, or wounded against demons, or caught by a demon in her own room - it had never been like this. He had been confident he had misjudged exactly how skilled she was in her own style of fighting, but it seemed that even the wiggle room he had been willing to give her was not enough to accommodate just how skilled Aurum was. She must be far stronger, deadlier, everything-er than he had given her credit for. He idly wondered if that meant that she was more skilled in other areas as well.

Cullen caught himself, and blushed crimson. He should not be thinking that about the Inquisitor.

He shouldn’t think about how that patch of dirt followed the bone of her hip.

Or how her hair was sticking to the back of her neck.

Or how her breast band was slipping lower as she moved, bent, _attacked_.

Or how her footwork was fucking impeccable, matching Dorian’s own steps flawlessly, instinctively, perfectly.

Or how the sunlight hit her eyes and made them glow like ~~lyr-~~ like opals.

Or how her neck tilted back and his own burned where she had bit him.

“Would you look at that. Blackwall is joining. Looks like him and the ‘Vint are ganging up on her. _Shit,_ the Boss is taking them both on at the same time.”

Cullen blinked, and there was Aurum, trading blows with both Dorian and Blackwall, defending herself flawlessly, _without_ magic, her stave whipping through the air to block the wooden sword and shield Blackwall held, and to keep Dorian on his toes. She moved with the efficiency of a predator, striking and blocking with the same movement, her staff cracking loudly against the shield Blackwall held, knocking it out of his grasp. But the warrior recovered his shield and fought back. Aurum still managed to hold the both of them off , spinning and twisting, the sounds of her staff impacting their practice weapons resonating enough for him to hear it, even being up in the library.

He sucked in air through his clenched teeth when Blackwall lunged towards her middle, and sighed when she twisted out of its path, her staff whipping up to force him to draw away.

The Inquisitor held her own in close combat, but she tired, eventually, her staff slowing as she had to continue the brutal pace. It was hard to defend from both attackers with only one weapon. He watched her make the decision, watched her knee come up as her hands bore _down_ and she snapped her staff in two. She defended herself now with two nearly equal-length pieces of wood, blocking and striking as easily as Cullen knew Cole could.

“That is fucking _hot_ ,” Bull commented huskily. Cullen found himself agreeing with the Qunari before he could catch himself.

Because it was. Very hot.

Aurum danced through the battle, defending herself from stave and blade both, ducking, weaving, stepping, **moving** and never faltering. Even as she tired, as Blackwall’s strikes shook her and Dorian’s sweeps came ever closer to pulling her down, she still _endured_ , gritting her teeth and fighting on, until she could rip Dorian’s staff from his grasp, shove him to the ground, and knock Blackwall to the ground with a kick of her legs, one of her stave-halves pointed down at each of their throats.

Both men surrendered to her, and with a laugh (she threw her head back and laughed, her belly jumping and breasts bouncing) she accepted the surrender, throwing her stave pieces to the ground and extending a hand to both, helping them to their feet.

She was still laughing when Bull slapped Cullen on the shoulder, breaking his attention away from the Inquisitor and all that _skin_ she had, and the muscles in her back and down her sides and how thin she was and how he was still positive that she could break every bone in his body and that he would probably thank her for doing so because she would have looked at him while she was doing it and _Maker’s breath_ her eyes were so fucking _bright_ that he –

Bull shook him again, and Cullen blinked, turning to the Qunari, who was smiling like the cat that ate the canary. Cullen’s stomach sank. Something was up.

“Let’s go see if she’ll entertain us, Commander. Wouldn’t it be grand to spar with her?”

“I do not think that would be…wise,” he tried to say, swallowing down the “Maker _yes_ ” that came up in his throat.

“Nonsense!”

And so it came to pass that Cullen was dragged down to the courtyard where Aurum was stretching her muscles, her arms draped over the stave Dorian had been using to spar with her. She was chatting amicably, twisting and dipping her torso to loosen up her muscles. Bull barked a greeting, Aurum replied in Qunlat, making a vaguely obscene gesture with one of her hands. The huge Qunari laughed, and she laughed back.

It took her a few moments to notice Cullen, and he swore that she blushed before she nodded a greeting to him.

“Commander,” she offered diplomatically.

“He wanted to come spar with you. I thought I’d come watch you wipe the floor with him,” Bull said with a wide grin.

“Hmmmm,” was her response. She looked him over from head to toe, tapping one of her bare feet on the dusty earth.

“I suppose if the Commander wants to strip out of some of that armor we can play a bit. Couldn’t hurt for the men to watch their Commander get his ass handed to him by…what was it, Bull? A twig?”

“Hey, hey, _hey_. You and Dorian are _both_ twigs to me.”

She snorted, and shook her head.

“Fine, whatever. Ready up Commander. This will be _fun_.”


	15. The Recognition

Aurum had a pleasant battle-buzz humming in the back of her head, so when Bull showed up with Cullen in tow, she thought nothing of it. She was happy, worked out and ready to continue. Her heart was beating hard against her ribs, but it was a pleasurable sort of thumping, a blood-pumping adrenaline rush that had her itching beneath her skin, just waiting to find something else to do.

Cullen was suggested as a new opponent.

Cullen was _accepted_. She wanted to try him.

He stripped out of some of his heavier armor, leaving him in his own leather pants, and an undershirt. Dorian booed from outside the fenced-in circle, and made some crack about Aurum being shirtless, so Cullen needed to be as well. Cullen said nothing, merely picked up the sword and shield that Blackwall had been using, giving the sword a few experimental swings to get the feel of the blade. Aurum kept her arms up over the stave she had stolen from Dorian, smiling dopily at Cullen.

Her battle-buzz kept her relaxed and lazy, and she stood with her legs about shoulder-width apart in the center of the small arena. Her shoulders were at ease, her posture nearly slouchy, and she had her chin tucked down, her head lolled to one side. She watched Cullen out of the corner of her eyes, waiting for him to indicate that he was ready.

“Inquisitor, forgive me in advance. I do not usually spar with mages, and-”

She turned, nearly sleepily, her stave slipping from her shoulders, into the crook of her elbow, then to her hands, and the relaxed movement she made turned quickly into a snapping swipe at Cullen’s temple. He caught her stave on his sword, blocking the strike easily, but still startled.

“Commander, I trained explicitly to kill Templars, and you certainly still hold your sword like one. Have at you!”

The fight began in earnest. Cullen was cautious, circling her to the left, sword and shield at the ready. Aurum held her staff in one hand, her eyes narrowed and calculating. She had an advantage when sparring with any of her Inner Circle companions. She saw them fight, she watched them in battle. She had not had that particular opportunity with Cullen, so she had to move slower. She had to draw him out.

Undoubtedly he thought the same about her.

She did not walk as he stalked around her, merely turning so that her shoulders were always pointed towards him.

Aurum waited, and watched, letting her body settle into the comfortable hum of battle. Cullen’s markings were all lion, but her vallaslin was Andruil’s. He was predator. She was hunter. They were well matched, in theory. Perhaps also in practice. She’d have to throw him to the ground a few times to be certain, though.

He lunged, she blocked, and the dance commenced.

She was light on her feet, air and ethereal mist, darting and dancing in and out of his range, trying to draw him out into another lunge. He was stalwart, unflinching, stalking and calculating, trying to draw her into an attack. She watched every move he made, learning, observing, waiting. He watched every move she made, counting, breathing, waiting. Aurum breathed through her nose, taking deep, even breaths, even as her heart’s beating increased. Fighting was something she had been doing since she could form memories. She knew the song of battle, and she was merely trying to find the tempo and rhythm of this one.

The song began to rise, humming in the background of her mind.

She made the first move, sliding into his range, her stave coming up to knock on the shield he held. It was a questioning move, a test to see his reaction, and Cullen added a new note to the song, shrugging off the attack. He knew it was a toothless action. Testing, yes. Dangerous, not yet. Aurum’s ears flicked. His gaze drifted to them.

The tempo picked up.

The next swing with her stave was at full speed, something that could easily shatter bone if it connected improperly. He caught that on his shield easily, thrusting forward with his sword, but Aurum twisted her stave and knocked the blade wide. The song gained coherence.

She danced, following the ebb and flow of Cullen’s dance, not caring for her own song. This was not the time to force him to step to her own rhythm. She had to understand his, first.

Their weapons met, they jostled, they switched positions, but it was all still cursory. There was no heat in their fight. It was questioning, pushing boundaries, pulling at loose strands, trying to see where the gaps in the armor were.

“Get _on_ with it!” someone called from the sidelines, and Aurum’s mouth ticked into a smile. Sera.

Her ears flared, and Cullen’s eyes, again, followed their motions. She chose that moment to strike, stepping in and thrusting at his nose with the butt-end of her stave. He blocked with his shield, but she was already moving away, dancing out of his range, tapping her stave on the edge of his shield, a taunt. Her range was easily twice that of his own. They were of a similar height, even if they were built entirely differently, but Aurum had a distance weapon and knew how to use it, especially when it came time for some hand-to-hand combat.

Cullen struck, a blistering fury of sword and shield, and Aurum defended, giving him space to drive her back, working around his movements to see how they all moved together. They were decently evenly matched, giving and giving nearly equally. As they found their own ebb and flow with each other, the speed increased. The two of them were very well matched. Each were masters of their own style, each trained from a very young age to combat the other, specifically. Templar and Apostate.

Cullen and Aurum.

They _matched_ each other. Her breath caught in her throat. Strike, block, counterstrike, riposte, parry, thrust, swing, slash, block. Repeat.

They circled.

Neither had an advantage, neither was at a disadvantage. They were near perfectly synced. Or at least, they were, until Aurum introduced an arrhythmic step. She stuttered her forward advance, forcing a pause mid-step that drew Cullen just the slightest bit out from an otherwise flawless defense. Her stave smacked across the back of his knuckles, and he dropped his sword from nerveless fingers. There was a deep split tracing across his hand, but he did not move to shake his hand out. He hunkered down behind his shield, covering his wounded hand. Aurum made a move to push the sword away, but Cullen moved unexpectedly as well, reaching out to wrap an arm around the staff and _pull_ , wrenching it from her grasp.

Aurum moved with the disarmament, diving forward into a roll, reaching for his sword. She grabbed the wooden weapon by its hilt, jumped to her feet, and assumed the ready stance, holding the sword with practiced ease.

Cullen carried the stave like a spear, and Aurum knew that he had to have some training with using the training weapon like that. Her ears flicked again, and Cullen, _again_ , tracked the movement with his golden eyes. She blinked, held the sword ready and circled. A new song started, faster, more frantic.

There was a burn across her shoulders she was not going to acknowledge until it started creeping down her back. After a lengthy spar with Dorian and Blackwall, she was not entirely in the finest of situations, energy-wise. When was the last time she ate?

Her stomach growled, as if reminded that it was empty by her idle thought alone.

Someone chuckled, and she flipped them off with empty hand. Cullen chose that moment to make a thrust at her with the staff he had stolen from her, and Aurum was quick to defend herself, catching the stave on her sword and forcing it away from her. The Commander did not have the same amount of skill with the staff as she did, and it showed. He staggered when she made her advance.

“She _is_ a Knight-Enchanter, Cullen,” someone offered from the left, and understanding dawned in Cullen’s eyes. Cassandra.

He might not be skilled in staff, or spear, but _she_ was not completely unfamiliar with the practical utilizations of a sword. Aurum drove forward, following the drilling steps Vivienne and Helaine had taught her, and Cullen had no option but to retreat, catching blows on the staff and the shield equally.

A particularly vicious spinning blow sent the staff splintering into shards at the tip, and Cullen immediately discarded it. A broken weapon was not to be used, not in a training bout where neither of them had armor on. A few bruises were okay (and some were already rising on Aurum’s skin to match the seeping cut across Cullen’s knuckles) but accidentally impaling someone on a shattered staff was not allowable.

So he was down to just a shield, and she still had his sword. They circled again, warily watching the other. Cullen still had his shield, and she, a sword. This was as close to a stalemate as they could get. Aurum stepped, considered, and, with an accompanying quick motion of her ears, threw the sword as hard as she could at Cullen’s shin. His attention went up, to the ears, and then down, to the sword, and then had to return to Aurum, who was charging and in the middle of a lunge.

She tackled him, the shield crushed between her weight and his body. He tried to throw her to the side, but she had already grabbed onto his shirt, so when she fell, she pulled him with her. He ended up in an awkward sprawl on top of her, his legs tangled with hers. Someone whistled appreciatively, and Aurum had the distinct impression that it was Dorian. It did not matter. She had two handfuls of Cullen’s shirt, his shield pressing into her chest, and an advantage to push.

She pulled his shirt, forcing his face closer to hers, and before he could get any funny ideas about what she was trying, Aurum crossed her hands in front of his neck, tightening the collar around his throat and jugular vein. She locked her legs around him and kicked out, denying him any way to get his feet under him and roll to dislodge her chokehold. Cullen still tried to fight back, but he had a wounded hand, and an arm pinned beneath his own weight. They moved against each other, each struggling to find purchase and deny it to the other, but Aurum had managed to gain the advantage early and did not relinquish it easily, despite Cullen’s best attempts otherwise.

He fought back for as long as he could, struggling against her, arching and twisting, but her chokehold was not going to relent unless he did, and he finally tapped his shoulder with his free (if a bit bloodied hand), and Aurum immediately released him, relaxing both the chokehold and the double lock she had on his legs.

Cullen stood, shaking his wounded hand out, and Aurum followed suit, just a bit slower. There was a pretty nasty bruise across her torso, and she could feel the throb of a strained muscle in both of her arms. That had been _exhilarating_. The battle-song faded, and she gasped for air, suddenly feeling all of the pain and aches that she had been blocking out to fight. She reached for Cullen’s hand, healing the wound there without asking for permission. He did not growl or curse her this time, just allowed the healing with the smallest of “… _oh_ ”’s under his breath as the wound sealed and the bruise faded away. Still holding his hand, she reached up to his throat, where a motley of dark purple was starting to form. The choke had been a pretty nasty one, and she did not need him actually hurt from that.

“Fair fight, Commander,” she drawled, standing back from him, and letting her own healing spells wash over her, in turn, healing her bruises cleanly, and fixing whatever she had done to strain her muscles.

“Fair fight, Inquisitor,” he said in return, looking down at his hand and flexing it.

“Does it still bother you? I was certain I had healed it cleanly…” Aurum muttered as she stepped back towards him, her tunic shoved under her arm.

Again, she took his hand, bringing it close to her face and inspecting where the wound had been. She poked and prodded, searching for a cracked bone or torn ligament that she had not put back correctly, but did not find anything. Confused, she looked back up to the Commander, who stared down at her, sweat covered and dirt-stained, with the smell of magic hovering around her.

“Is something wrong?”

“N-no. I just was not expecting it to feel like that. Most healermages don’t do it like that.”

Aurum smirked at him, resting one hand on her hip and canting it to the side.

“I’m not most mages, now am I?”

He looked up at her, shock on his face, and Aurum reached forward to pat him on the side of his face. She turned away, shrugging her tunic back on, belting it quickly. Bull was congratulating her, saying that Dorian now owed her a drink as well, to the loud complaints of the Tevinter mage. It seemed a few of her other companions had come down to watch the bout, along with some of the soldiers, and there was a smattering of applause from the gathered crowd.

Aurum turned and offered them a mocking bow, and saluted Cullen, who inclined his head back to her. She smiled at him and turned back to Bull, all ready to go get a drink. She felt like she needed one.

* * *

“Come on, Aurum. You _have_ to tell us.”

“Nnnah. Deal was you had to beat me. You didn’t. Not even with Blackwall’s help – which was _bullshit_ for you to even think to take. So I don’t have to tell you _shit_ , Tevinter,” she drawled.

Aurum was leaning back in her chair, feet resting on the table, and her chair balanced neatly on the back two legs. She had brushed her hair back into a simple braid, and had thrown it over her shoulder. She was the very picture of inebriated uncaring. Her words blended together more than usual, and she had practically melted into the rough wooden chair. The table she sat at was also occupied by Bull, Dorian, Blackwall, Varric and Cole.

Her ears were relaxed, drooping and low, flared out from the side of her head in as close to a completely ‘sleepy’ position as possible for an alert elf. She cradled her ale in her lap, balancing it as best she could on her tummy. In that moment, she looked nothing like the Inquisitor.

Something that was made abundantly clear when the first whisper of “knife-ear” came from behind her. Aurum’s ear twitched up from its relaxed position, rotating back to locate the position of the person who was slurring insults at her back. Dorian tensed, and she shook her head. This was not worth the fight. Bull still turned to look at whoever had insulted her, which Aurum allowed. The Qunari could really do whatever he wanted. Aurum did not feel like getting into a bar fight. It would be an insult to the fights she had just had.

The whispering continued, and the bar grew quiet. Apparently the maligners were not from the Inquisition proper yet. Mercenaries or traders or something like that. Nothing she could not stand to lose. She sipped her ale, and waited. These sorts of hate-mongers always liked to escalate when they felt like they had any sort of attention from anyone else, and the quiet bar gave them the opportunity –

“Hey, bitch, get me a drink. Servers shouldn’t be sitting down on the job.”

 _Perfect_.

Aurum waved off the concern of her companions. She could handle this.

She said nothing, just took another long pull from her ale. One of the assholes reached forward and knocked it out of her hand, spilling her drink all over her arm and lap. She froze, staring down at the spreading ale-stain on her clothing. The men sniggered.

Well she would certainly have to do something about that.

“Ar’din nuvenin na’din.”

The odd discordancy between soft Dalish and _harsh_ growling had the men reconsidering their movements. Aurum looked up at them, her lip curled back in a sneer. She made a very disjointed movement, rocking up onto her feet _very_ quickly, and just as rapidly stepping into the space of the man who had spilled her beer.

“Diratha _ma_.”

The pair lost their nerve. Aurum’s eyes were wide, and her body language was very good at translating the Dalish curses that poured from her mouth. She advanced on them, her head down, her teeth glinting in the tavern light, and magic sparking in the air around her.

“Ma emma _harel,_ ” she snarled, reaching for the dagger in the back of her belt. The movement was threat enough, and when the interlopers saw that they were not gaining any sort of friends in the tavern, they scattered.

Aurum watched them leave, smirking confidently. That had been fun.

She magicked the ale out of her clothing, shaking it out onto the floor. The fact that her clothing now smelled like mediocre ale, was far less amusing, however. She would have to go change, regardless. Maybe wash the dust and dirt out of her hair and off her skin as well. Sighing, she turned back to the table. Varric stood and applauded, and she offered him a gallant bow.

“Sers, I must be returning to my room. I do not wish to smell of ale. Thank you for the drink, Dorian.”

They smiled, and Aurum waved absently. Exhaustion hit her all at once, and she felt rather like a bath would make her day so much nicer. She could feel the aches in her neck and down her back from all the work she had done in the past two days. Her magic hummed beneath her skin, and Aurum idly scratched at her wrist. It was an after-affect of being so close to someone with withdrawal. She felt some of the symptoms herself.

“ _Aurum_.”

Looking up, Aurum was surprised to see Solas waiting in the corridor to her quarters, standing in half-shadow.

“Solas. May I help you?”

“I have a question.”

“I may have an answer. What is-”

“Where did you learn vir’sulahnera?”

She knew what he was talking about. Well, she knew what he meant to talk about. The Way of the Dream-Song. That was the translation, at least, but the phrase was unfamiliar. Even if Solas knew more of elvhen lore than she did, he usually tried to explain unfamiliar concepts instead of asking her why she had not learned of something. Vir’sulahnera? She did not know what it could refer to. She tried to consider what he could mean, but Aurum could not think of anything in the recent pass of days that he could have seen or felt and then asked her about.

“Excuse me?”

Solas snarled at her, grabbing her by both arms and pulling her close.

“Where did you learn vir’sulahnera? The dream-song to walk in the Fade-dreams of another? Who taught it to you?” he demanded, shaking her.

Aurum’s brows drew down into a frown and she shoved Solas away from her. As a warning, her barrier flickered around her. She would defend herself from any further contact if she needed to. She had had _quite_ enough of men grabbing her and snarling questions at her for one lifetime, thank you kindly. Slowly, she pieced together what Solas was asking, and her mood only soured.

“No one taught me. I have always known the quiet-magic. Keeper Deshanna fostered the ability, but since my magic came to me, I could-”

“Do not _lie_ seth’lin. Someone taught you.”

It was Aurum’s turn to snarl, a full-throated sound that was vicious enough to make even Solas take a step away from her. Her magic crowded the air, filling the corridor with her power. It was the closest she had come in months to actually letting the full magnitude of her magical ability burn the air around her, and it was enough to get Solas to blanch, his ears dropping down from the side of his head.

“My blood is not _so thin_ to have lost the ways of old. My mothers sang to me in my dreams, and I listened. No “one” taught me. Not a one. Many. A Fade-walker like you should know that. Get away from me.”

Solas’s eyes widened, and his anger vanished, consumed all at once with curiosity. His ears indicated as such, perking back up and tilting towards her. Aurum sneered. Now that she was _interesting_ , he was no longer angry? How dare he treat her like that, call her blood thin, insulted her entire lineage and then find her interesting as soon as she revealed that she had, perhaps, more experience in the Fade-walking than he had originally given her credit for.

“Aurum-”

“ _Away_ ,” she growled, pointing towards the exit. Solas opened his mouth and Aurum slapped him, hard enough for her fingernails to leave welts on his cheek.

Shocked, he held a hand to his face, looking to Aurum who still held her rage in check just barely enough to keep from shaking.

“Go. Now.”

Solas mumbled an “abelas” beneath his breath, but Aurum did not give an acknowledgement. She watched him leave, glaring at his back, waiting for him to be gone entirely before continuing towards her rooms. Her shoulders ached, and now a blistering ember of fury had nestled in her chest.

Her bath better not be interrupted or she was going to flay someone with her mind.


	16. The Dragon

She had a copper tub, one of two that existed in all of Skyhold. While Aurum did not particularly care for the titles and accolades that came with being the “Herald of Andraste”, after the Ball at the Winter Palace, one of the men who had hoped to woo her had sent this magnificent piece of metalwork and Aurum had never been more thankful to be unwantedly-wooed.

The tub was easily large enough for two people, so Aurum could luxuriate in heated water and scented oils and soaps to her heart’s content. Being a mage was an additional bonus because her water would never _not_ be as hot as she wanted, nor would the dirt and grime cause it to cloud uneededly. She could sit in the water for as long as she wanted and just _think_ but still be _warm_ and that was so nice.

With a long sigh, Aurum sank into the almost-too-hot water, letting the heat seep into her bones. She shivered, and groaned as she realized just how _badly_ she had wanted this bath. She idly scrubbed dirt from her skin, just wanting to be clean. The dirt clouded the water and she flicked it out of her bath with a quick flash of magic. Clean water, scented oils that smelled like citrus flowers on the wind, and a deep heat that made her head tip back in relaxation all made for a very nice end to the day.

Her bruises stung, and her muscles ached, but as she let the warm water cradle her and soothe the pain away until she was pleasantly relaxed. Unwinding as the Inquisitor did have some perks, in that she had a private bath and could stay there as long as she needed.

Idly, her hands drifted down her body, first to feel out any soreness or bruises she may have missed when she sent her healing magic into the water, and then, just because she liked touching herself. It had been…Creators, it had been months since she had –

“ _Ooooh_ , fuck,” she groaned, her fingers skipping over her nipples. Flicking, pinching, tugging on them, just briefly, in passing, and all at once her blood was on fire and she _needed_ more.

All of the tension, the worries, the fears? Gone, and replaced only with need. There was a fire in her bones now, a months-long ache that certainly was not going to be alleviated by something as innocuous as brutally passionate, sloppy kisses on the War Table.

One of her hands slipped lower to cup her sex, just to tease herself. A little bit. It was not going to be anything more than that. Just a tease. Just a _little_ bit. Her hands skimmed over her hips, and she flexed up into her own touch, a long undulation that made her feel so alive again.

_He pushed her up onto the table and wedged himself in between her legs so he could maintain closeness and control. Aurum bit his lip until she tasted blood and he was muttering something about Andraste’s tits and trying to lick at the wound she gave him._

Her back arched and she gasped for breath. She did not entirely want to think about what had happened in the War Room, but damn, as soon as she had started, it was not hard to continue thinking about it. So she surrendered to the sweetness of the thoughts. One of her hands toyed idly with her nipples, and the other stroked either side of her clit, teasing. Teasing. She was just **teasing** herself to the thought of what she and Cullen had been doing.

Could be doing. Oh, what they could be doing together. Passion ran like a treacherous undercurrent between them, she knew that. Anger and passion and lust and need bound them already – the desire demon had proved that much. Her heart pounded, and she sighed. She had felt him, strong and powerful, trying to overwhelm her not more than an hour ago, and the sensation was indeed one that was hard for her to forget.

_Her mouth was pressed to his neck, sucking bruises all up and down his flesh. Each mark she left made him moan and rut against her hips. His hands clenched on her waist, trying to hold himself still, because that had been what she had asked for, but it was so hard. His cock was already painfully erect and, every movement he made against her sent need through **him**. _

_“A-Aurum, please,”_ _he whined, his hips jerking against hers, seeking friction that she denied him._

_She bit his earlobe, running one of her hands up over his throat. He thrusted up against her, gasping her name as she continued to tease him, desperately trying to keep his hands where she had put them. She rewarded him with a bite to his lip, tugging on his lower lip until he leaned into her. Aurum kissed him fiercely, biting and licking at his mouth, not caring when their teeth hit together. Cullen moaned into her mouth, his attempt to be quiet overwhelmed by the feeling in his chest._

_“Do you want to fuck me, Cullen?” she hissed, digging her fingers into his throat._

_“Maker, **yes**.”_

_She growled lowly, and nearly ripped the laces from his breeches. Cullen finally moved, tearing his hands from her hips, pulling her smalls and trousers down around her ankles before pushing her up against the wall of the small corridor they had found themselves in and sliding the length of his cock along her cunt. Teasing. Teasing and sliding and rubbing against her clit, waiting for permission. Aurum’s voice left her though, and she was arching against him desperately, her fingers scrabbling for purchase on his armor._

_Creators it felt so good. So good. She just needed him inside of her. She tried to grit out something to that effect, but her words kept getting stuck in her throat, and all that came out were panting exclamations of how **good** he felt. _

_“I-I want…inside, Aurum please?” he panted against her mouth. “Please, Aurum, I want. Inside, I want to be – I want you.”_

_He mewled piteously when she moved her hips just so – just letting him barely inside of her, just barely, for a moment, before she withdrew again._

_“Please, Ahn-urum!” he whined._

_She smirked, pleased with how desperate he sounded. Cullen made needy moans beneath his breath every time his cock dragged against her slit, and it took the merest brushing of his mouth against her ear to finally broke her resolve. She gasped and twisted her hips just_ so _and then he was seated inside her. Cullen gasped, she keened, and then there was a new tempo and the rasp of her skin against the wall as he fucked her._

_Cullen dropped his head to her shoulder, biting her gently, just trying to hold himself steady against her. When he kissed up the column of her neck, she groaned, arching into him. He nipped at her ear, and she screamed his name, letting her head drop to the side to allow him better access. She was so fucking close, she could feel her orgasm starting to coil in her gut and she was going to get him to cum in her as she came herself. Creators would that feel **good**._

_“Aurum, Maker’s breath, La_ dy Aurum! Inquisitor! You are needed in the war room immediately!”

The **Very** unwelcome voice of a **Very** unfortunate page snapped her right out of her fantasy. She felt the orgasm that had been rising in her blood bleed away, leaving her on the cusp of pleasure, but unable to feel it.

Aurum surged up out of her bath, drying herself with a snap of magic, dressing herself in the closest tunic and trousers without a care for putting her smalls back on and stormed to her door. Her pleasure gave way to frustration and she threw the door open, chest heaving, hair wet, eyes wide, and magic just barely contained within her.

“ **WHAT** ,” she snapped, looking down at the suddenly very intimidated messenger.

“T-there is an urgent missive waiting for you in the War Room. The o-other advisors requested your presence immediately.”

She had to bite her tongue to keep from cursing. Her hands clenched into fists at her sides and she had to take a few long, deep breaths before she could formulate an answer that had nothing similar to “I was in the middle of fucking myself over and you fucking came and interrupted and now I feel like I’m going to explode you gods-damned stupid messenger.”

“Please inform the other Advisors that I will be there momentarily.”

The page bowed low and quickly and all but ran away from Aurum.

For her own part, she tried to get her warring feelings under control. She had been through so much in the past few days that adding one more thing onto the top of the pile felt like it was going to be too much for her to handle. She could not even get the time to herself needed for a simple masturbatory fantasy that _definitely_ was about the Commander of the Inquisition. The fantasy was crass enough without someone interrupting and reminding her that she was fantasizing about a shemlen ex-templar in her private time. Everything always needed her attention.

She sighed, and brushed her hair back out of her eyes. Aurum did not even bother with trying to braid it, or fix it in any meaningful way. She just got it out of her face, straightened up, laced her tunic’s collar extra tightly and then began the short walk to the War Room, hoping her blood would cool by the time she got there. She certainly did not need Leliana or anyone else making a comment on her appearance.

Aurum scrubbed her face, wished her heartrate back to normal, and entered the War Room. Cullen stared at her from his position at the center of the map – o – o –over by the Frostback Mountains.

Panic gripped her all at once, and she stopped dead in her tracks, staring at him like he was the Blight incarnate. The desire demon’s touch had corrupted something deeper in her, apparently, and she found herself stricken with fear.

_Well that certainly is not good._

She swallowed it, made her apology and went to stand where she usually did, doing her level best to keep…everything…together. Aurum prayed that it was not too apparent that she was having a hard time looking at the map and listening to what was going on. It was bad enough that her emotions were being pulled in seven thousand directions simultaneously, and adding in “had a public panic attack over something inconsequential” would not improve her situation. At all. Aurum took a deep breath, pushed everything welling up inside of her down and got to work.

_This is real. This is not the demon’s conjuration. This is real._

She bit her tongue and listened as best she could to the reports coming in. The report was not as urgent as the page had made it seem, and in fact, Leliana apologized profusely at she realized that Aurum had been bathing. The urgent matter had been resolved within moments, and now it was back to the banalities of the war. That did not stop her heart from pounding uncomfortably against her ribs.

_Cullen is not coming near you, he is not holding you against the table. It is not what it made you see._

She bit her cheek until she tasted blood when Cullen leaned across the table to gesture to something at the Frostback mountain’s base. Leliana was staring at her, and Aurum licked the blood off the inside of her mouth before she responded to the concern that Cullen was bringing up. Aurum could not even remember what she said. The words came out of her mouth, but her mind was miles away. Miles inward.

She shuddered, but maintained her composure. She had to stay calm. Should be. Should be calm.

Her hands started to tremble. It was starting to get to be too much. Panic was rising like an unstoppable tide in her gut and she was struck with the insatiable need to be somewhere else. Somewhere else right now. She needed to be gone right now, right now right now right now rightnowrightnowrightnowr i g h t n o w.

Aurum grit her teeth, and dug her fingertips into her palm hard enough to send flashes of pain racing up her arm. She felt the slickness of blood drip down her fingers, and was quick to fold her arms over her chest to hide the blood. She could not use her magic without Cullen being alerted to the problem, so Aurum kept her eyes on the map and spoke as tersely as possible to hide how she was shivering and shaking just beneath the calm surface.

Leliana called an end to the meeting a few minutes later, and Aurum fled the War Room, her mind spinning out of control. Her heart still hammered in her chest, and her hands shook. She needed something to do. Something to kill, something to distract her from the thrumming of anxiety in her throat, anything at all that could stop her shaking. So much had happened. So much was going wrong, had gone wrong, would go wrong and Aurum’s throat felt tight with the fear it all caused.

She sought out her armor, dressing herself for battle and instead of grabbing her staff, she reached for a paired set of daggers that she had stolen off of a dead body, or out of a chest, or something. It did not matter. She needed to feel close to the thing she wanted to go kill, and while her magic was wonderful, powerful, and everything she loved about herself, Aurum was also a trained hunter. She was deadly with her bow and with her daggers, and it had been too long. Too long. Memories surfaced, painfully colored with loss and longing.

She needed something that separated herself from what had happened, something to pull her apart from what had happened. Memories came to her, whispering her failure as leader, as commander, as Keeper.

She needed a new bed. She needed new _everything_ for her room, because it was all tainted. Memories of the aravels she had travelled in, the ones she had fixed, the way the wind had felt in her hair, of what she had, just the few possessions she could carry.

She needed a lot of things. But most of all, she needed to not be here.

It was easy to get Bull to agree to come with her. The words “going to kill a dragon” generally got the Qunari’s attention, and when she made the promise that they were, yes, going to go into the Hinterlands and kill that dragon that Scout Harding said was living behind one of their camps, he all but jumped out of his chair in the tavern to assist her. Varric popped in at exactly the right time to sign on for the dragon-slaying, and Solas managed to find them just as Aurum was saddling her mount to leave.

If he noticed how Aurum was ignoring his presence, he gave no indication of it. He merely invited himself to come along, and Aurum was too wrapped up in trying to get her hands to stop fucking _shaking_ to snarl at him to go away. It was not important. The dragon could take a bite out of Solas’s ego. There was certainly enough of that to fill the belly of a high dragon.

She clenched her hands anew, her gloves now protecting her palms from further wounds, and mounted her hart.

Rage uncurled in her chest, and she urged her hart forward. The motley group rode on, with Aurum at the lead. She just needed…she needed to fight and kill and breathe some of this fury out of her. There was something dark and _needy_ under her skin and she could not scratch it out.

The itch under her skin was the one that Cullen had experienced, she knew that. She knew that what she had done to soothe what ailed him had transferred some of what he had been struggling with to her. That was what happened. Together, stronger than one. But…but she had no one. She had no one and nothing but panic attacks and illicit fantasies that fed into those.

Aurum shook her head.

There was a dragon to kill. She would go do that.

* * *

Blood was everywhere. She was drenched in it, from tip to toe. The dragon’s blood seeped into her wounds, and while usually, she would have been concerned with this as a mage who had to be leery of blood, the blood of a dragon held no such fear from her. Its strength was _hers_ now. She stood, with daggers in hand, staring up at the sun, covered in blood, and _smiled_.

This was power.

Bull was making **very** appreciative sounds beneath his breath, picking through the dragon’s corpse. Aurum sheathed her blades and ran her hands down her face. The blood was still slick, but drying quickly. There was so much _heat_ in the blood. She felt so warm. Her fingers traced down her throat, and her magic rumbled beneath her skin. Solas _growled_ , stepping close to her.

She heard him approach, and took an equal-length step away from him, her boots squelching in the gore of the decimated dragon.

He lunged, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her behind him. He was definitely growling something under his breath, but Aurum could not hear it, nor did she care to. He was _pulling_ her, and she definitely did not like that, so she _pulled_ back, fighting against his wish for her to go where ever it was that he was trying to make her go. Varric and Bull were of no help, and Aurum could only snarl her objection. How dare they? She did not want to go this way, she wanted to stand in the blood, she wanted to –

The ground dropped out from underneath her and Aurum fell. For a moment, she had the idle thought of spreading her wings, of flying and roaring, searing the world in her flames, and then she hit the water.

“Shit _buggering **fuck!** ”_ she screamed as soon as her head came back up from underneath the water.

Her armor weighed her down, and without thinking, Aurum unclasped her belt, letting her daggers fall into the deep water beneath her. She was not a strong swimmer to begin with, and the shock of being thrown into the water was enough to kick the primal don’t-fucking-drown instinct into high gear.

In what was probably the most undignified, worst example of swimming ever, Aurum struggled back to shore, rushing up out of the water, stumbling and falling flat on her ass on the drier ground as soon as she could. She blinked water out of her eyes, reached up to brush her hair back, only to find that it was significantly shorter than she remembered it being.

“Next time, don’t do that and I won’t throw you in,” Solas grumbled from above her. Aurum looked up at him, glaring as fiercely as she could manage.

“I can’t fucking swim, you ass. What happened to my hair?”

“Wait, the Inquisitor can’t _swim_? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Shove it up your ass, Varric. What happened to my hair?”

“Dragon burnt it off, Boss. You can’t swim?”

“ _Why_ does it matter? I am fucking sorry, I was spending too much time being trained in how to carry on my Clan’s tradition to learn how to fucking swim. It was never important.”

Aurum huffed and got to her feet, shaking her head. It felt light, now that she had the presence of mind to recognize it. The battle was a blur in her mind, and she had the feeling that was probably because she had been incredibly stupid throughout all of it.

The chuckles from her companions made her laugh along with them, regardless of how stupid she felt.

She investigated her fire-shorn hair, and found that it was maybe only a hand’s-length at its longest. With a shrug, she reached up and pulled it straight up from her scalp, drying it in place with a twist of magic.

“Wouldn’t’ve happened if you’d been wearing a helmet, boss.”

“Helmets are stupid. You’re not wearing one, anyway and you’re already down _one_ eye.”

“Yeah, but it looks _really_ badass.”

Aurum huffed and climbed up to stand with them, shaking her light armor out to try and get some of the excess water to go away. Her boots were full of blood and mud and water, and there was no fixing that without taking them off.

Sighing, she looked down at her toes. She wiggled them in her boots and tried to figure out what she could –

“Let’s go, Boss. Drinks are on Chuckles. He bet that you’d get knocked on your ass before the dragon died, and you didn’t fall down until you had the fight with the river.”

Aurum looked at Solas, who looked away from her. There was the lightest dusting of pink on his ears. For some reason, this was funny to her, and Aurum threw her head back and laughed **hard**.

“Solas, you made a _bet_? With _Bull_?”

“It seemed a prudent choice at the time. It was either make the bet, or deal-”

“Fine then. Drinks on Solas when we get back to Skyhold.”

The elvhen mage sighed and leaned on his staff. Aurum smirked at him. She could see a smile playing around his lips, though. That was nice enough to see, even if she was still angry at him. Then again, she was angry at _everything_ , so perhaps it was not fair to say that she was mad at him, specifically.

“Come on Chuckles,” she said, punching him companionably in the arm.

“After you, _Sunshine_.”

He delivered the line completely deadpan, staring off into the distance. Aurum looked at Solas for a second, gauging the mage’s reaction. They had not been getting along as of late, and the explosion between them back at Skyhold. That had been days ago – the travel distance from Skyhold to the Hinterlands was enough to give them some time to cool off. Then again, Aurum had still been ignoring him to the best of her ability. Too much about him reminded her of those she had lost, of what she had lost, and it did not help that he had needled her painfully on those things whenever he _did_ speak. What he knew and what she knew were at odds, but he spoke with a conviction she did not have, and it grated her to hear it.

She settled on rolling her eyes at him.

She would work on amending her attitude later. She could ignore it. The panic, and fear and pain and everything that howled just beneath the surface…she could ignore it.


	17. The Clan

Aurum was standing on a table, half-in her armor, half-out of it, barefoot and wild-haired, a tankard of ale in her hand. Someone had asked for a drinking song, and after three more drinks, it had seemed like a grand idea to sing one of the many songs she knew. Besides, it was a fond memory to sing bawdy songs in entertainment of others. Aurum sang glory and fire into her magic, and it was easy enough to just sing songs for the joy of it. She had to laugh, or she just might cry. And damn it, she might not be the First of Clan anymore, she might not have anything to herself, nothing that she could define herself as other than a name from a woman she had never really known, but she _would not_ cry. Never. She would never cry.

The dragon had been killed weeks ago, and she was still only just barely holding back the howling sorrow behind her teeth.

She started by stomping her foot on the table to get attention and as soon as she had enough quiet that she could be heard without shouting, she started, swaying to the beat.

“Indignation’s fiery flood,  
Scalds my innermost being.  
Hither, thither I must be  
By my follies hounded.”

She drained her tankard and plucked a fresh one off the plate of one of the serving girls. Aurum tipped a sovereign into the woman’s bosom, to the hooting of laughter around her. She winked at the stunned gal and waved her on her way. If she drank enough, if she sang enough, maybe she could run away from the sadness in her heart. Maybe she would stop feeling the howl of desperation and despair in her throat. Maybe she could remember how to laugh and mean it all the way through her body. Maybe she could stop feeling like she was wearing the blood of her Clan in her vallaslin.

“Give me loose society  
Where the jokes are funny;  
Love will bring variety,  
Toil that’s sweet as hooooney.”

Her feet tapped out the rhythm as she carried on singing, and drinking and singing some more. She could hear the Chargers take up the beat, clapping and stomping along so that Aurum did not sing unaccompanied. The bard looked distinctly put out, but that did not matter. Aurum was singing a raunchy bar tune and no one cared to hear _another_ song about Sera, so everyone was enjoying what she was singing more than what the bard would try and do.

“Down the primrose path I post,  
Straight to th’harlot’s grotto,  
Shunning virtue, doing most  
Things I ought not to.  
_Oooooooooooh!_  
Hear me prelate most discreete,  
For indulgence crying:  
Deadly sin I find so sweet  
I’m in love with dy-ing.  
Every pretty girl I meet  
Sets my heart a-sighing  
Hands off! Ah, but in conceit,  
In her arms I’m lying.”

The jeers only grew louder as Sera jumped down onto the table Aurum was on from the second floor and Aurum sang at her, drinking and reaching for the pretty city elf in mockery. Everyone present was clapping along at this point, or pounding their tankards on the table, or singing along with the parts of the song they knew. Aurum twirled Sera, dancing prettily with the other woman, skipping merrily over the table, kicking the empty tankards out of her way. Sera laughed in time to the song and danced.

“My intention is to die  
In the tavern drinking  
Wine must be at hand, for I  
Want it when I’m sin-king.  
Angels when they come shall cry,  
At my frailties win-king,  
‘Spare this drunkard, Maker she’s high,  
Ab-so-lute-ly stin-king!’  
Cups of wine illuminate  
Beacons of the spirit,  
Draughts of nectar elevate  
Hearts to heaven or neeeeaar it!”

She finished the song with a low bow, and finished _that_ tankard of ale as well. She motioned for another, not wanting to deal with the rising nervousness in her stomach. Her drunken stupor had her world tipping around her, but she could still worry, still feel the press of anxiety in her throat. She drank and drank and drank until the world was spinning, and she was finally freed from the feeling of impending doom. Giggling, laughing freely, doing everything in her power to maintain her tenuous hold on everything that was boiling under the surface.

Someone else started singing, and with a laugh, Aurum danced atop the table, spinning and twisting and gyrating. Doing everything in her power to not remember, not think, not do anything that could bring up any sort of memories. She did not want to think about what was happening. She really, really did not. The bar-wenches stopped bringing her beer because she was on top of the table, so Aurum jumped down, intent upon another beer. Someone reached for her, grabbing her by the hip and trying to pull her close. Aurum peered up at the man, and realized she did not know who he was. Had this been one of her companions, a jest, a good-natured joke, she would have been fine. As it was? She did not want this one touching her. She peeled his hand away from her hip and stepped neatly out of their grasp.

He gave chase, and Aurum growled, a low warning. Her world might be spinning, her world might be breaking around the edges and spiraling out of her control but she was still her _own_ and no one else’s. Despite what the drunk was slurring at her, despite his assertions that he would make her believe in the Maker and his **grabbing** , Aurum knew she did not want him. Not him, not ever.

She wanted something else. Someone else. Blond and scarlet and silver. Maned and roaring. She wanted that. For whatever reason, for thoughts she did not want to think of, she wanted.

Someone else got in his face, telling him off, snarling and sneering as appropriate. Aurum was thankful and turned back towards the bar, intent on that beer she wanted. But one of her Companions (he smelled like lacquer and sweat so – _Blackwall_ ) took her by the arm and pulled her gently back to one of the tables in the alcoves by the door, leading her to the furthermost corner and sitting next to her, blocking her in.

Aurum made some sort of protestation about not having her beer, but then someone was pushing a tankard towards her and she was reaching for it greedily, taking a long pull from it because the _thoughts_ were coming back and she really only needed to be just a little more intoxicated and maybe then it would be finished.

She swallowed.

“Thissis fuckin’ tea.”

It took a lot of effort to turn her head to see who the person who had dared give her tea when she wanted beer was, and saw Solas standing at the head of the table, staring down at her. A particularly bad dizzy spell washed over her when she looked him in the eye, and again, for a moment, she swore his aura shifted into something beastial. But a blink, and it was gone. She shook her head and found her anger.

“ _You_ fuckin’ hate tea, Solas. Th’fuck you’d give it to me for, then?”

“Told you Boss’d have a mouth on her once she got drunk.”

“Bull. Beer. Now.”

Aurum looked over Solas’s shoulder to Bull, who managed to sidle up at precisely the right time.

“Sure thing, Boss.”

“Don’t,” Solas barked, turning to the huge Qunari, as if he could actually make the Ben-Hassrath do anything.

“I don’t work for you, I work for her.”

Solas sighed loudly, and at great length, opening his mouth to continue the argument, but Varric jostled past him to join Blackwall and Aurum in the booth table, sitting opposite Aurum and placing a plate of sweetrolls on the table. Aurum eyed the plate warily. Varric did not share his sweetbreads lightly. Something was up.

“Chuckles, you should know better than to try and get Tiny there to do anything. Hey, Sparkler, come sit with us. We were just getting to the good part.”

_Shitfuck this is a trap, dammit._

She made a move to exit the booth, trying to slide past Blackwall, but the Warden hemmed her in and made it clear that she was not getting past him. Her lip curled up over her teeth as Dorian sat next to Varric, and not-so subtly put his foot on the bench between her and Blackwall. She would not be able to squirrel out under the table.

“Vishante kaffas,” Aurum growled at him, her tongue twisting over the Tevene words in a way that made Dorian laugh.

She considered throwing her tea at him. Blackwall rested a hand lightly on her wrist, anticipating the movement. Damn him. Damn them both. All of them. Damn them all. This was a trap and there was a sinking feeling in her stomach that they would want to talk about what was happening, what had been going on, her flightiness, the reasons for her not being around them, for fighting like a woman possessed, for shrinking from them as she knew she had been.

Bull returned with a tankard and Aurum reached greedily for it, only to watch in disappointment as he drank it instead of giving it to her.

“You can drink after you explain what is going on, Boss.”

“I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about. Now _move,_  Blackwall or I’ll set the table on fire.”

“The hurt goes deep and deeper, as deep as the snows on the bad days. Who is she, what can she be? Her Clan is gone, dead and dying and dissipated. No one planted their trees or sang the songs. Her fault, her fault, her fault. She tried to lead and failed. She is no one. No one and clanless and no one agan.”

Cole appeared. Or…maybe he just walked up to the table. He was getting better at the ‘acting like a real boy’ thing, and Aurum was, after all, very drunk. She swallowed the bile that rose in her throat at the words, knowing them to be true and not at all capable of being angry at Cole. She could never be angry with Cole.

“They trust her, yes. But they are not her Clan. Are they even her friends? Would they be here if not for the Inquisition? When the threat is passed, so will they. She will be nothing. She is nothing. She is titles and titles are words. Her purpose, her place, her reason is gone. And they ask her to fight anyway.”

Aurum blinked and looked at the table, suddenly very much feeling as if she were all of three inches tall beneath their scrutiny. She could feel the eyes of everyone on her. Judging her. Finding her weakness. Hearing it. Cole had probably spoken of it to someone to start with, and they had wanted her here for the whole telling of her story. Which was kindness and unkindness both. He was a precious one, and she knew he was trying to help, but…she needed to be strong and this was weakness. This was –

“They need her to be strong, to fight against the impossible. She closes rifts in the sky and this gives her the knowledge to broker peace between nations? To save the Empress, to understand what has been lost, to kill the unkillable, to battle against armies far beyond what she had ever seen? How? How can they trust her with all of this? How long does she have to fight? How long does she have to be strong? This was not what she wanted, this is not the life she wanted, this was not what she _wanted_. How much will they take from her?”

Hearing it made it too real. Too much. It was –

“She could not lead her Clan. She tried. She failed. Would they have lived if she had died at the Conclave? Would it have been better if she had not been the one who survived? What of all the others who died, certainly there was another who was better, anyone could have been better. Her Clan would not be gone, they would not be dead, none of this would have happened if she had just been gone with everyone else. They…they are gone because of her. She could not say goodbye. They are gone. It is her fault. It is all her fault.”

Cole looked at her, and Aurum held his gaze. She felt the tears pricking in the corners of her eyes, and she was powerless to stop them from falling. It did hurt. He was right. All of that was right. Panicking, she looked around the table. Everyone was still watching her. Solas was watching her. Solas, who even as an elf who did not fall into any of the two places where elves were usually assigned, must know that she was showing some weakness beyond what was acceptable. She had failed, and she had done so in a way that had cost those she had loved their lives. She had nothing anymore –

“But, Aurum, that is not right. You did what you could. What was best. That is not your fault. You loved them, and they loved you. Keeper Deshanna would not want you to think like you are. She loved you. You were her daughter, as much as she could ever have one. They died trying to be as great as you are. They died knowing they were doing what was right. They wanted to fight, they wanted to protect. You made them strong, strong enough to protect those who were weaker than them. They loved you.”

“Cole-” she started, a warning, a question, a begging start to something she could not say.

“ _I_ trust you, Aurum. You do amazing things. You are very strong, but you are not alone. We can be your Clan, can’t you?”

“ _Cole-_ ”

“You don’t want to say no, please don’t say no. You are my friend, and I want you to be happy. Your hurts do not have to be hurts. I will be your Clan. You don’t have to be alone.”

She bit her lip and looked down. Tears slid down her face and she reached up to scrub them away, not wanting them all to see the weakness in her. She was supposed to be strong, supposed to show no pain, supposed to _endure_ it, but now she could not. It hurt too much to endure. A strangled hiccupping sound came out of her throat, and she dropped her head to the table, hiding her face behind her arms.

“Hey, hey now Sunshine. Come on, don’t do that.”

Varric rested a hand atop her own and squeezed it. Aurum allowed the contact, not wanting to do anything to make them leave her any faster than they already would.

“You know we’re here for you, right? If we did not want to be here, we would not be. You are our friend. If your Clan is gone, you still have us.”

Aurum shook her head and covered her face as much as she could with one arm. She didn’t want to hear this. Sweet lies were lies regardless and she did not want to hear them tell her soothing lies. She was the Inquisitor, and they were her people and they could not – _should not_ lie to her about these things.

“Boss, seriously now. If we did not like you, we would not be here. I don’t follow anyone who doesn’t deserve that honor. You’re a good leader, and-”

Aurum covered her head with both of her arms and stopped listening to what Bull was saying, a surely very silly gesture, but the only one she could think to make. This was not happening. They were not –

“Come on, Dalish. How does this whole Clan thing work, then? If we have to sport matching tattoos, I might be a little more hesitant, because while your face is beautiful, darling, I just don't think I have the bone structure for such a thing. I’m certain I can find something-”

A near hysterical hiccupping laugh came out of her mouth and Aurum tilted her head so that she could look at her friends. They were…they were her friends. Companions and friends. Cole beamed at her, smiling widely from beneath the brim of his hat. The same smile he wore whenever he knew he had helped someone who hurt. He was happy. She did not want to think about why it had hurt her so much to think of hurting Cole by being unappreciative.

“ _You_ assholes would make the worst Clan ever. Except you, Cole. You are, as of right now, officially the second member of Clan Tarasylan. Aneth ara.”

Cole beamed, Solas looked amused, and across the table, Dorian pouted mockingly at her.

"So the spirit gets to be the first one in the Clan? I see how it is."

“Ugh, _fine_ Dorian. I know you want to wear all the fancy elvhen robes and whatnot. You can be my First. Happy? You’re second in command, fucking ‘ _Vint_. Might as well make Bull the Warleader, since why the fuck not. Varric, you’re Hahren. Storytelling comes naturally enough to you, might as well teach you the stories I know. Deshanna would like that. Blackwall, you’re part of the Clan too. I just ran out of titles. Solas, I don’t know where you fit, but you’re welcome to be a part of this shitshow. I…you know, I _insist_ you join my Clan. This clan, whatever. I want to learn what you can tell me. This Clan breaks enough rules as it is, I might as well learn the heresy you talk about.”

There were words of celebrations, exultations, friendly banter and joking, and she finally got another drink. She snatched the sweetbreads before Varric could make them disappear and worked a little magic to make them end up in her mouth before he could take them away. She was careful to wipe her tears off her face and then scrub them from the table as she chewed, doing her best to make the motions as unseen as possible.

It was not the same, this Clan she made so that she would not disappoint Cole. It was not perfect. By most countings, it was not even a Clan. But…it made it better. She could count the Inquisition as her Clan. She could Keep them and still remember Lavellan. She would always belong to Lavellan, but she could also be here. The title of Inquisitor was no less daunting, no less terrifying and the path before her was not suddenly paved in golden roses, but…

She had them.


	18. The Kiss

Sometime after the Clan-formation, and further drinking _and then some more drinking_ at the behest of Bull who wanted to celebrate the death of the dragon with a type of alcohol that burned her all the way down, sometime **after all of that** , she was escorted back to her quarters by a giggling Dorian and a less-giggling Bull. Varric hovered in the background, the only one of them remotely sober enough to try and guide them along. Magic sparkled in the air. Controlled, yes, but not at all like it usually was.

 _A drunk Dalish mage, a Qunari, a Tevinter Altus and a dwarf walk through Skyhold_. Varric chuckled to himself. That was the start to a joke that would never be believable, let alone have a punchline worth the setup. He took a few steps forward to try and dissuade Aurum from the banister she was walking towards.

Unfortunately for Varric, he was also the smallest of them all, and two laughing mages plus one very large Qunari were not an easy thing to herd. Aurum had a tendency to meander towards tall things, talking about how she could totally climb that and it would be a great place to jump down on someone from just for shits and giggles, while Dorian egged her on in rambling Tevene. She would respond, half the time, in slurred Dalish, and others in Qunlat or Orlesian, surprisingly enough, but never in Tevene. When Bull asked her why, Aurum turned to peer up at the very tall Qunari, her mouth set in a thin line, the banister forgotten..

“Cuz is fuckin’ hard t’speak Tevene when you have t’translate out’tive Dalish. Our words don’t mesh right. S’like tryin’ to…tryin’ ta…I dunno. It’s hard. S’easier to just not.”

“But Qunlat, really?” Bull pressed, curious.

“Easy ‘nuff. You’re all…syllibant and soft in y’language. The harsh letters clic- _k_ and then soften, lulling people inna complacency. Baaaaaas-saa-reeeeeee-baaas. Dangerous thin’. It’s _sss_ soft, but it condemns. Hissrad. Liar. But it don’t sound like lies. Sounds soft, warm, welcoming. Hhhisssss-rad. Which makes it one. Venak hol. Those words’s sharp, bu’ end onna sigh. Fittin’ for something like that. A-and then there’s…” Aurum paused, frowning at herself, trying to collect her words. They came out in a rush: “Shok ebasit hissra. Meraad astaarit, meraad itwasit, aban aqun. Maraas shokra. Strong words. They fit what they mean. Qunlat is a _very_ straightforward language. Good f’s drinkin’.”

Bull stared at her, and Aurum smiled, showing too many teeth all at once. She could manage a lot when she was drunk. Tolerance and magic, and that sort of thing. He had nothing to add, but he held her gaze for a long time, clearly thinking something over in his mind.

“Orlesian?” Varric offered from behind her, and Aurum turned to him, her body flowing through the entire movement, a dizzying display of fluidity that made Varric’s stomach churn.

“That issa language _made_ f’slurrin’ when y’deep in cups. Did th’drink come afore th’words, or were th’words twisted by th’drink? Drunk n’ whisper withet movin’ y’lips an’ y’speak Orlesian perfectly.”

Varric laughed, and Aurum grinned lopsidedly at him.

“You are chatty when you’re drunk.”

“I’m chatty n’general, but when y’surrounded by shemlen, y’learn to stay quiet. Unless y’want ta fight wittem, y’hold the comments inside. Easier t’do what you need t’do t’get back t’th’Clan. But damn, y’should hear a Clan affer th’elders get n’ th’cups. Can’t gettem t’shut up even if y’tell ‘em Fen’Harel s’breathin’ down th’neck of one-na th’younglings. Elves’re fuckin’ _chatty_.”

“I’ve _never_ seen a chatty elf,” Varric pushed. “Not a Dalish, at least.”

“Y’ve not been inna Dalish elf’s company long’nuff ferrem t’name y’lethallin, or even vhen’ma. Which y’r’now. My people. Only ones I’ve…got. _My_ blood-kin, _my_ people. So yes’ll be very talkative. Though probly not ‘round my hangover in th’morning.”

Aurum reached for the banister to stay upright. Bull put a great hand on her shoulder and helped her steady herself. Dorian was a laughing mess, who alternated between cooing at Bull and snorting something offensive under his breath at Aurum.

“Someone smack Dorian upside th’head fer me. I’d try but I think I’d miss n’ hit his ass,” she snapped.

“That’d be a _shame_ ,” Bull commented, taking a glance down at Dorian’s derriere. Dorian wiggled his ass invitingly, and winked at Bull and Aurum in turn.

Aurum rolled her eyes, and nearly fell over from the force of it all.

“’Vint’s got a great ass onnim. Almost as good as the Commanders, really. Be a shame to put a handprint on it, izzall.”

“And the Commander’s?” Varric asked, prying because he knew he could probably get away with it.

“Put some hand’s allover that Chantry boy’s arse. Preferrably mine, but yanno, I think he’d be much less prickly if anyone was handlin’ ‘is prick,” Aurum slurred without an ounce of regret. “Coulda tried to cop a feel in the spar, but man, I was tryin’ to not lettim get the best of me. Fuckin’ templar trainin’ is rough t’fight through. See how he had his shield? Givvim a proper one and some real steel and I’d probably be fucked. Not even the fun sort of fucked! But without my magic, hand-ta-hand only goes s’far. Not far enough to really beat ‘im, I don’t think. I’d have to watch him fight more.”

She missed the conspiratorial smirks that went around her drunken companions. Aurum was actually rather focused on trying to re-dissimilate what and how Cullen fought, but that was difficult when she was drunk, so she was very thankful for the distraction that the door to her room provided.

“Thank y’ll much for walkin’ my drunk ass t’my room, but I can handle it from’re. I will get to bed, change into somethin’ that smells less like whatever rotshit Bull made me drink and then I will sleep and wake up horridly hungover tomorrow morning…or this morning, whatever, and then I will hate all of you immensely. Go fuck yourselves, goodnight.”

* * *

True to her words, she woke up the next morning feeling like her brain was trying to punch its way out of her skull. Her new bed was very comfortable and that did make the hangover that much easier to handle. But she needed to get up and be the Inquisitor. And yes, she had horrible friends who had made it easy to drink too much and now she was regretting every drink she had had.

Groaning loudly, she rolled herself out of bed, hitting the floor with a thud. She had somehow managed to strip out of her armor and had thrown on one of her sleeping robes the night before, but as she lay on the floor, still half-wrapped in the blankets that had been on her bed, she did not care about that.

No. Aurum wanted food to settle her stomach and the mental clarity to cure her hangover.

She kept making the pitiable noises because there was no one around to hear them, and slowly got her feet underneath her, keeping her blankets still wrapped around her to ward off the chill of Skyhold. The night before was a haze of half-remembered words and phrases, but the deep settling calm in her stomach reminded her of what she had said to her companions.

They were her Clan, for now.

She was their Keeper. The Inquisitor, and the Inquisition.

Aurum huffed at how stupid she had been. Mourning was not something that suited her higher thought processes. There was time enough to mourn. She had lost so much, yes. But she had a purpose still. Something like that. Something that could be a purpose, at least. She could still live.

She shook her head and fumbled for her satchel of herbs. There was something scratching at the back of her mind, an urge, a whisper to find something to soothe the ache in her teeth, her veins, her blood? Aurum sighed. Hangovers were awful for a mage. She grumbled and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Reports littered her desk, and as she pulled her satchel from its resting position on the floor, she picked up the topmost one, seeing that it had been delivered some time before she had been dragged back into the

 _Good, good,_ she thought idly as she skimmed the report. It was one Cullen had written himself, and she was always pleased to see one of his reports. His handwriting might not be the best, but if you read the letters right, you could practically see him sighing and rolling his eyes at the situation.

Aurum fished out the dried herb she needed and crushed it in her mouth, chewing the bitter herb until she felt the press of her hangover start to fade. Grunting as she went through the motions of dressing and getting herself ready for the day. It was going to be a long, long day, she could feel it in her bones already. She needed to go see Cullen to discuss what their next move should be regarding the Grey Wardens. Besides Blackwall (who Aurum was certain was currently snoring in the top floor of the barn and would not roused until three past noon) and Leliana, Cullen was the best option for that sort of discussion. And Aurum wanted to know what _he_ thought before she went to Leliana, so that she could have a better opinion of what needed to be done.

Besides, she felt like she rather owed him a conversation, regardless. It had been a while since they talked, and she had not been…herself for quite some time.

Trudging down the long path from her quarters, through the main hallway and towards Cullen’s office, Aurum yawned more than once. She licked the residue of the herb off her teeth, and attempted to scrub the sleep out of her eyes. Her hair was a stick-uppy mess, but it always was in the mornings. It just so happened that shorter hair showed that particular trait of hers.

She entered his office, taking a deep breath as she did so, just in case she had to duck out of the way of another thrown kit.

“Oh! Inquisitor, good morning!”

One of the many messengers already haranguing the Commander greeted her cheerfully, and Aurum nodded her acknowledgement. She turned her gaze to Cullen, and completely forgot why she had originally come here. The early morning light that alit upon his armor dazzled her eyes and her deep breath came out in a rush. The Commander was _very_ handsome. And she had _very_ much lost her train of thought now, thank you.

Grey Warden?

What’s a Grey Warden?

“Commander, if I may, a word?”

“Of course, Inquisitor. Was there something you needed?” Cullen said distractedly, waving for her to speak.

“In…private.”

“In private?” He snapped his attention up to her, his brows furrowed.

The _weight_ of his gaze hit her like a punch straight in the gut. Aurum found herself straightening up just the littlest bit more, her chin jutting forward and shoulders rolling away. Those movements were instinctive, but the flush of heat that chased them? Oh, that did not bode well. Oh, Creators, she was in trouble.

“O-of course, Inquisitor.”

* * *

They walked together around the battlements, Aurum defaulting to talking about business. Inquisition. Inquisitor, and Commander. Not Cullen and Aurum because there was this weird bundle of nervousness in her belly and she –

“I-it’s a nice day.”

His comment came entirely out of nowhere and it caught Aurum so critically off-guard she nearly tripped over her own feet. She turned to him, in time to see him rubbing the back of his neck. He did that when he was anxious or embarrassed. Why was he doing it now?

“What?”

“It’s…there was something you wished to discuss.”

Aurum swallowed the knot in her throat that bore the sounds of “desire demon”, “you”, “Creators _please_ ”, and most embarrassingly –

“Cullen, I care for you a-and I…”

_Oh just kill me. Just kill me now. Strike me dead Elgar’nan, I cannot live through this._

“What’s wrong?”

_Oh, so now he doesn’t stutter. Great._

“You left the Templars. I was…unkind to you before, and I did not trust you. I know you no longer follow the Order and that you have abdicated that life as completely as you could. I know I did not make it easy on you, and have been something of a pain in your ass, at the very least, and not given you much reason to respect or believe in mages having their freedoms. But…do you trust mages? Could you think of-” she caught herself before the word came out, “Could you think of one as anything more?”

His answer came almost too fast.

“I could.”

She blinked, her ears rising high up and the very tips starting to turn just the lightest shade of pink.

“I-I mean, I do. Think of you. And what I might say in this sort of situation.”

He covered his face and turned away. Aurum could not tell if this was a moment when she was going to find out that the Commander was actually married with three small blonde babies and a homely wife somewhere back in Honneleath, or if there was something else going on because his _body_ language was going one way, and his words, another.

Curiosity won. She had to know. Even if it was colored in shame, she had to know what was bothering him, what he had thought of saying to her. She needed to know. She wanted to know what was hidden in his heart.

“Then what’s stopping you from saying it?”

He looked at her.

“You’re the _Inquisitor._ We are at war. And you…I didn’t think it was possible.”

He took a step closer to her, and she backed up against one of the parapets. He advanced again, his eyes never leaving her face. It was…it was hard to remember to breath. It was hard to think of anything because his eyes were golden rings circling the darkness of night, and his lips were pulled back into an almost disbelieving half-smirk. There was a pause, a stop in the songs that surrounded her life, a precipice, a moment between moments and she held her breath.

Aurum could tell he was waiting on something. Some indication from her, some way forward or backward from this point. Generally, Aurum was a well-spoken woman. She had studied language and cultures from all over Thedas. She was conversationally adept in five languages, and could curse fluently in eight. She had managed to disarm Florianne with nothing more than a bluff and some nice words, and she constantly toed the line between genius tactician and insane political heavyweight. She could sing dirty limericks and ditties that were made to trip tongues without even a pause, but her mind came up with none of those things.

No. No pretty words, no great explanation, nothing more than -

“I’m still here.”

A true statement, but not the poignant phrase she had been searching for. The small answer seemed worth it, however. Cullen stepped closer, and closer still, until she was pressed quite firmly against the parapet and they were far too close for professionalism. He beamed at her when she did not seek to move away, and Aurum noted that he had left her a way to escape this closeness, if it was not what she wanted. That fact only made her want him closer, however.

“So you are. It seems too much to ask…”

His gaze dropped to her lips.

Her heart fluttered wildly. Her chest ached for want of air, but her body ached for his touch.

He leaned in, and she matched his movement. She kept her eyes open just the slightest bit longer, so she could watch his movements for as long as possible because if this was going the way she thought it was going, it was definitely something she wanted to remember for a very long time because _yes_.

“But I want to-”

 _Creators_ , she could feel his breath against her lips and it was really, really not fair that he was so far away from her still.

He seemed intent upon fixing that though, his hands drifting to rest gently on her waist, pulling her gently towards him, tilting his head down and to the side so that they could finally draw close enough to each other to figure out if that burning in her blood she felt when she was near him was truly anger or lust.

The door slammed open.

“Commander!”

Aurum pulled her head back, her lips just barely brushing Cullen’s own. His eyes opened and he froze, just inches away from her. The grip he had on her hips tightened briefly before he released her. Aurum was pretty certain that if she let go of the parapet she would fall, so she stayed still as Cullen turned his gaze to the interrupting messenger.

The very unfortunate messenger began to deliver his missive from Leliana (again, why was it that it was only _Leliana’s_ messengers that seemed to interrupt things? Aurum would have words with her Spymater later), only to be interrupted as Cullen stalked towards him.

“ ** _What_**.”

_Oh Creators have mercy on me._

The way Cullen _moved_ was predatory. Pissed off, yes, definitely, incredibly so. But _predatory_. And Aurum did so love her predators. She watched, enraptured as Cullen advanced on the messenger, tall and imposing, forcing the messenger to lean away from him, despite the very small difference in height between him and the messenger. She could practically _feel_ his anger from where she was standing, and the messenger seemed to understand that he had interrupted something between the Commander and the Inquisitor very, very quickly.

“O-or I’ll just deliver this…t-to your office! Of course, ser!”

The messenger bolted, and Aurum did not blame him. The strength of her legs returned to her, and she pushed herself away from the cold stone. Whatever had been in the interrupted moment, whatever they had been building towards, whatever it was that had been hovering there, just out of reach? It was gone, she was sure. Cullen stood very still, watching the messenger leave, his shoulders tense beneath his armor and his hands clenched at his sides.

“Cullen, I’m sorry. If you need to-”

She was not given the chance to finish her sentence. Cullen turned and closed in on her, wrapping one hand around the back of her neck and pulling her into a fierce kiss. He pushed her back up against the parapet his hips flush against hers. Her hands had gone out from her sides in shock, and he used that chance to wrap his other arm around her waist, holding her tight to him, just in case she had tried to get away. The shocked sound she made, made him stiffen and pull away, an apology already tumbling out of his mouth. For a moment, she was shocked, standing there on the battlements with Cullen, trying to figure out what had happened.

“I’m sorry…that was…um…”

Aurum snarled, a sound more frustration than threat and reached both of her hands up to grab Cullen by his fur mantle and _pull_ him back towards her, kissing him a hungrily as he had first kissed her. His hands found their places on her body again, and he made the slightest sound of shock and _need_ under his breath. Aurum only kissed him harder, biting at his lip with enough force to draw another **sound** out of him before pulling away so she could chide him for apologizing.

“Do not apologize for that Cullen. That was exactly what I wanted.”

She smoothed her hands over his rumpled furs, organizing the strands to lay flat. Aurum did not look up at him, busying herself with adjusting the clothing she had mussed in their brief tryst.

“Oh. Good.”

He kissed her again, slow and smooth, gentle where he had been ferocious, and covered her body with his own. Aurum made some small sound under her breath when he drew away from her, and he chuckled, pulling her closer to him. She rather did not like how he found amusement at her own needy sounds, and pouted at him as he stepped away. Still, he blushed, and looked away from her when she leaned back against the parapet.

“And how long have you wanted to do that, Cullen?” she teased, mostly to cover the way her heart was pounding, pumping arousal through her.

“Longer than I should care to admit, Aurum,” he replied, rubbing the back of his neck and looking away from her, and then back to her, with a small smile that _pulled_ that _scar_.

The way he growled the ‘r’ in her name, like he always did, instead of softening it, like everyone else did, made her nearly blush to the very tips of her ears. Still, she felt like she was at a disadvantage and pushed on the teasing tone, not wanting to come out of this underneath him, unless she was going to be _underneath_ him.

“And the fact that I’m Dalish? That I’m a mage? That doesn’t bother you?”

“N-no. I hope that doesn’t…does it bother you? You are the First of your Clan a-and… _Maker_ -”

She kissed him again, not wanting to talk about the title she held. The one she had held. The one that meant nothing because her clan was dead and all that mattered was how he melted into her, how he kissed her like she was the only solid thing on the battlements, how he pulled her closer and closer, even if she was already pressed flush against him. His armor dug into her, and Aurum did not care. It was nice. She wanted it. More of it.

Guards tactfully avoided their section of the battlements, though Aurum knew there would be rumors flying because they were not exactly _not_ in direct view of half of Skyhold, and snogging like teenagers that just found out what kissing someone of their preferred gender felt like. She was content to just fall into the kiss completely, surrendering herself to the feeling of his lips on hers, and the questioning press of his tongue against her own.


	19. The Fortress

The decision to lay waste to Adamant was a difficult one. But it was the only choice.

Aurum distracted herself from the inevitability of true war by throwing herself into helping her friends. Mother Giselle came to her, asking for silence and assistance in tricking Dorian into going to meet an envoy sent by his family. Aurum laughed in the Reverend Mother’s face, told Dorian what was happening, what was planned, and together they went to Redcliffe, determined to face down whatever was there.

When they came back, neither of them left the tavern for a solid thirty-two hours, and this time it was Aurum reassuring Dorian about what they had just been through. Not that the meeting had gone awry. No, it had just been Dorian’s father instead of the envoy Giselle had told them of, and while no one came to blows, when Dorian walked out of the room he and his father had been talking in, he had looked at her and asked to go drinking. So they drank and laugh, and in disjointed Tevene, Dorian told her about his childhood. She listened, though drunk-talked Tevene was hard for her to understand, and comforted as best she could.

Bull nearly lost the Chargers. Nearly, because Aurum would rather sink a thousand Qunari dreadnoughts than force him to choose to kill his men, and she told him that. He looked to her, with something like gratitude in his only eye and sounded the retreat. The assassination attempt, she had been told, was a mere formality. That had not soothed her rage, and the bodies had been found in the night, scorched beyond all recognition.

Solas had wanted help for one of his friends, and Aurum had obliged. The Graves were not her most favored of places, but even for the elf with whom she often butted heads regarding certain aspects of their shared culture, she would do anything. He irritated her, he grated upon her every nerve, but he was there for her when she needed it and she owed him so much.

Josephine begged for a showing party of the dragon’s skull, and even though Aurum had allowed most of the carcass that she had not used to be carted to some researcher, she still had the skull and allowed the party.

Now, all of thirty minutes into the party, she was regretting that decision immensely. Courtiers, banns, noblemen and women were milling, talking and whispering and making heavy-handed flirtations at her and anyone they assumed was available and liable to react well to these sorts of things. She looked to see if she could find Cullen, to commiserate with him…and…

He had his head bowed, blushing and smiling at a raven-haired human female, whose dress had her ample breasts pushed up to the point over overflowing. Aurum tried to ignore the knife of jealousy that sliced into her gut at the way Cullen’s hands reached for her idly, how the woman arched into him, her mouth smiling around words that Aurum could not catch over the cold fury in her stomach. Cullen looked at that woman like she was a storm cloud on an unbearably hot day. Like she was the first clear day after the most brutal of winters. Like…like Aurum had thought he had been looking at her.

She sighed, swallowed her anger because it was not hers to have, anyway, and looked away. She had misread. Fair enough. She bit her tongue, to keep her traitorous words in, turned to the nearest dignitary that was politely awaiting her attention, and promptly gave it.

The days that followed only increased her animosity towards the strange woman. Every time Aurum went to speak with Cullen, any time that they were not in the War Room, _that_ woman was there. Aurum tried to keep the growing suspicion that she _knew_ that woman, that she had _seen_ that woman before down.

She knew this was irrational. Dignitaries could stay and talk with whoever they wished to while they were welcome in Skyhold. She knew how she felt was not real, not right, not proper, but it did not stop the hot ball of anger that settled in her gut every time she came into Cullen’s office, only to see him mooning at her, and once, to see her standing next to him, drawing idle designs on his armor with the hand she had wrapped around his shoulders. She had turned around _very_ quickly after that, slamming the door behind her.

Adamant loomed, and Aurum stopped trying to speak to Cullen. She only snarled once. Or twice.

 _Shemlen_ , she thought traitorously as she heard the woman’s braying laugh echo through the courtyard.

Nothing could soothe the rage spinning in her heart. Nothing could stop it, so she turned it inwards, hiding it away from the prying eyes of any who would think to force it to abate.

Varric and Hawke and Cassandra circled each other warily, and while Adamant came closer, they all found themselves spinning closer and closer to a knife’s edge. Emotions ran high, feelings ran rampant, and people snapped at each other. Fights were always a mere breath away from breaking out, it seemed. Tension made everyone vibrate, made teeth grind, made hands clench in anger and when it was finally time, it seemed like there was no one who was not relieved to be marching towards almost certain disaster.

* * *

Adamant was a fortress, overrun with demons and Grey Wardens half-possessed by demons and red lyrium and rifts and the _mother fucking archdemon_. Aurum stormed through with her companions, finally freed to wreak havoc, to burn and destroy and protect and defend to her heart’s content. Sera went down, screaming as a demon clawed at her shoulder, shattering her bow. Aurum defended her, standing over the injured elf and forcing the onslaught back until some of the Inquisition soldiers could come forward to take Sera back to safety.

She fought onwards. There was a clear goal, something to _do_. She charged, fury in her throat, magic blazing around her, and she found peace in the chaos.

Or at least, she did until the ground began to give way. The Grey Wardens had made their final stand, their Commander realizing what had been done, and trying to stop it, to give Aurum some time, to distract the archdemon, to protect the Inquisitor. Aurum appreciated that. But the ground was falling, and she could not run fast enough to get away.

“Bull! Throw the dwarf to safety!”

Varric had the least amount of a chance to escape of them all. Bull was massive, Aurum was fleet of foot, Dorian was very good at sprinting, and so on, but Varric had a distinct disadvantage. Bull did not hesitate, grabbing Varric by the back of his neck and, with a quick-footed spin, chucked the dwarf clear to safety. That was good. Those who had been on the bridge fell, and Aurum tried to force her magic to save the others. She fell first, furthest, farthest, and she would not be their leader if she did not _try_ to save them all.

* * *

She hit the ground.

No…no she didn’t?

She lay upon the ground, looking up at Hawke who was looking up at her. For a moment, the two women regarded one another, until Stroud groaned from some weird land mass to their right. In the distance, the Black City. Oh, they were in the Fade. They were actually in the Fade. Brilliant. Awesome. Very good. Thrilling. Amazing.

“Well _fuck_ me,” was all Aurum managed to say.

Solas chuckled from behind her, before sighing wistfully and looking around the Fade as if he were a man enamored, Bull grumbled, and off in the distance, she heard the growling Tevene of one Ser Dorian Pavus of Minrathous. Well, it could be worse.

* * *

Pain raced like fire down her leg, across her chest, through her gut. Nightmare and fear dominated the landscape of her mind, the words of the demon who owned this area of the Fade echoing loud enough for Aurum to drown even the worst pain out. She had to kill him, she had to stop the words, she had to make him _stop_ because she could not bear to hear her fear. Seeing the fears of her friends on the tombstones had nearly broken her into pieces, and no wound could cover the pain in her heart.

She heard Dalish, knew she should listen, knew that the growl in Solas’s voice _meant_ something, but her mind could not bear to try and comprehend it. There was only one goal.

To get out. To get free, to leave, to leave, to _get away_ , Creators let her _live_.

The final rush to the rift that would lead them out of the Fade came, for Nightmare was defeated, but the great spider-monster was still hounding them. One must stay behind. Hawke, who had a lover in an elvhen covered in lyrium, or Stroud, the Grey Warden who wanted to do what was right. Aurum did not know how it came to be that the decision fell to her, but it did.

Her voice shook.

She made her choice.

* * *

Bull, Solas and Dorian were thrown from the huge rift in the Courtyard of Adamant. Hawke tumbled through a moment later, light on her feet, her staff coming up to ward against any attackers, but the Courtyard was clear.

“Where’s Aurum!?” Dorian called, almost simultaneously to Cullen’s near-frantic “Where is the Inquisitor?”

The rift spat again, and, wreathed in green fire, Aurum tucked, rolled, and turned back to the Rift, reaching out to close it with the Anchor. She was drenched in blood and ichor, her armor rent in more places than it was whole, but with her stood Stroud, blood-soaked and leaning on his sword, but alive.

Aurum turned to the crowd around her, her skin pale and one of her ears missing the last few centimeters off where the tip had been.

“Just _once_ ,” she growled, stepping forward, and nearly falling to her knees. She caught herself with her staff, shook her head and looked back to the gathered, awed crowd. Her wounds were grievous, deep, and gaping. If one cared to look at her left thigh, they could see straight to bone, and that was not the only place where that was true. Her stomach was a mess of claw-marks and her back looked no better.

“Just. This. Once.”

She coughed, blood dripping from her mouth. Solas was already moving towards her, his hands wreathed in healer’s green.

“Just _once_. Everyone lives.”

Aurum could not keep her feet underneath her and collapsed into Solas’s waiting arms, shivering. Her blood dripped in a worryingly large puddle around her. A simple sweep of his hand told him more than he wanted to know.

“Get the healers! We need all the healer mages who still can cast a spell, she’s going-”

Aurum coughed again, great gouts of blood spurting out, thick and viscous with pieces of her own internal workings in them. There was a murmur through the crowd, a momentary lull until the Inquisition exploded into movement to assist. Guards took post around them, facing outwards in case the defeated Grey Wardens chose to attack again, and word went out, back to the camp, to fetch… _everything_ , anything that could help the Inquisitor, for her wounds were grievous.

Solas helped her to the ground, laying her out where, mere moments before, the rift had hovered. The veil was thin there. It would suffice. Aurum succumbed to another coughing fit, and before Solas could move, Dorian was kneeling at her head, gently turning it so that her blood would flow out of her mouth and not choke her any more than it already was. His magic was all but exhausted, but he still worked as diligently as Solas, running the healing magic over the wounds he could manage to see to without knocking himself out cold.

Aurum’s lips moved, her eyes fluttered closed, and Dorian did not know enough Dalish to translate what she was whispering beneath broken breaths. Solas, however, did, and he looked up at her as if she had struck him in the mouth. For a moment, he was perfectly still, watching her lips move over the prayers she had been taught. She had been the First. She would know the mourning prayers, and she would say them. But this was different. This was not some backwards Dalish clan reciting snippets of half-remembered dirges.

This was Aurum, begging in the tongue her People had jealously treasured –

“Fen’Harel, in’ar,” she gasps, her voice so soft as to be nearly lost before starting her prayers anew, reciting the same lines feverishly, even as her body started to tremble and coughing took her again.

“Fen’Harel, in’ar. Ma ghilana mir din’an…”

Solas stared at her, slack-jawed, and Dorian reached across to smack him upside the head, and not gently. The elf blinked and looked up to the Tevinter Altus, his brows drawn down. Dorian did not flinch away from the elf’s stare.

“Whatever she is saying, it’s not important right now, Solas. _Heal_ her. We cannot lose her. **_I_** will not lose her.”

Vivienne joined their circle, adding her magic to the growing whirlwind of healing that centered on the Inquisitor, who was still coughing at intermittent points. That is, when she was not making desperate-sounding choking sounds deep in her throat and her hands were not jumping up to press to her wounds, as if to staunch the incessant flow there. Her magic sparked at her fingertips, a desperate attempt to summon aid to herself but nothing was working. Dorian pressed his bloodied fingers to her throat, feeling for an obstruction, and finding none. His hand follows lower, pressing against her sternum gently, and she coughed blood in a truly worrying amount, choking on it afterwards until he reached into her mouth to remove the obstruction in her throat. The obstruction, of course, was part of her inner organs.

Dorian made a sound under his breath, one of desperation and fear, and Vivienne mimicked it in her quieter fashion. She called over her shoulder for lyrium, knowing that even between the three of them, it was not going to be enough to fix what was wrong with Aurum. Solas pulled her legs flat and straddled her hips in one eerily smooth movement.

Her mouth still moved around the words of a prayer.

Solas worked all the harder at her wounds, growling obscenities in Dalish, peppered with Aurum’s name beneath his breath. Someone scrambled to the mages, holding vials of lyrium in their hands, and offered them to Vivienne, pressing them into the Grand Enchanter’s hands before rushing away.

Solas ripped her ruined armor wide to better see the extent of the wounds she had sustained. Vivienne made a shocked sound under her breath and Dorian sucked on his teeth. Aurum must have taken a serious hit when they were not looking at her. Perhaps when she had stayed to ensure Stroud escaped as well? It was impossible to know.

But her innards were spilling out around deep gouges in her flesh, and in some places, the barest sliver of bone jutted out from broken flesh.

“Maker preserve her,” Vivienne whispered almost reverently.

“It is not the Maker she called for, but a _Wolf_ ,” Solas snarled, snatching the vials from Vivienne’s hands and cracking them in his fists, not caring that the glass shards cut into his flesh.

Lyrium dripped down to land, steaming, on her skin. Lyrium wanted to be used, and with three mages present to use it, it was soon turned to healing, flowing over broken flesh and leaving it whole in its wake. Solas shook the glass out of his hands, and pressed his lyrium-touched hands to her chest, letting his magic flow through the amplifying substance and into her.

She needed to be healed.

Complete and unbound. She needed to live. Live as she should have _always_ lived.

Magic existed to be shaped by will, and Solas had a willpower unlike any other. He willed her whole, he willed her hale, and with Dorian and Vivienne flanking him, they slowly healed the dying Inquisitor, urging life and vibrancy into the broken body beneath them, working from one wound to the next, calling for more lyrium when they began to flag, not allowing any of the other healers to come closer. They were Aurum’s companions and they would not let her pass beyond the Veil. Not today.

Just this once.

No one would die.


	20. The Unmade

Aurum sat bolt upright in her bed, her breath catching uncomfortably in her throat. She regretted the too-fast movement almost instantaneously, her muscles screaming in protest, and dropped back, resting her weight on one elbow as she looked around, trying to piece together where she was.

Her rooms.

Not Adamant, not dying, healed and mostly whole, with no idea what day it was, or where any of her friends were. But she was alive. She was alive and not bleeding everywhere.

The air was cold, the night was dark, and when Aurum looked down at her mostly-bare form, the familiar moonlit-glow of her tattoos…was missing. Gone. The tattoos she had born since her nineteenth nameday, the ones she had wanted since she had been formally recognized as the First of Lavellan on her fifteenth, the ones she had been so proud of, the ones she had chosen for herself were gone.

She tore the blankets from her legs, searching and hoping and praying that she was just not seeing them, that there was something else going on, that she had not lost something so incomprehensibly valuable to her. But there was nothing. Her fingers pressed into the skin that had born the moon-sensitive ink, and she could not feel the slight raised scars that should have been there. The tattoos were gone. Erased entirely. If those marks were gone…

“No, no, no…” she chanted under her breath, struggling to get to her feet and stumble towards her mirror. She fell at its base, her legs unable to support her and her mind in mad disarray.

The wailing of the wounded sounded in the night, and Aurum wept, clutching the mirror to remain upright. She heard the pounding of feet coming up her stairs, and hid her face from whoever it was that was coming for her. She could not be seen like this. Not now. Not ever. She had lost something too vital to ever be seen again.

“Da’len, please, let me see you. I must check your wounds,” Solas’s voice came from behind her and Aurum only shook her head.

He pulled her up by the elbow, and she was too weak to resist. She stood, half-dressed and naked-skinned before Solas, who first checked where the new, pink scars across her torso were, running his fingers along their slightly sunken edges, feeling for any injury. He found none, and, confused, he looked up to her tear-stained face.

“Are you-”

“Do the Creators hate me, Solas?” she asked, her voice rough and raspy.

He blinked, opening his mouth to question her need to have that answered. She closed it for him.

“Does Fen’Harel laugh at the one who wore his marks? Is that why they took my vallaslin? Does he laugh at the grand trick that is my life? Is that why all of this happened?”

“Aurum-”

“Is this punishment for something I did wrong? Did I not sing right, did I not remember the stories properly? Did I not offer him the proper respects? Should my vallaslin have been to him instead? He is the only one who walks, and I did my best. I _tried_ , Solas. I did everything the People remember needing to be done. I did what I could and it wasn’t enough, was it? I asked for death, and he gave me life again. Life without my-”

Her voice broke into a near-hysteric laugh, and she pulled her arm from a still-stunned Solas. With blunted and broken fingernails, Aurum clawed at her cheeks, the welts marking her face in place of the tattoos she had been so _proud_ of. Her vallaslin, her dedication, her choice, her mark of adulthood and belonging, were gone. She was healed, yes. Alive, yes. But again, unmade.

“Was it not enough that what I did to protect my clan - at the behest of my clan – was it not enough that that _destroyed_ them? Was that not funny enough for the Trickster, for them all? Did he need more? Was it not enough that I was forced into being the Herald of a Goddess I did not worship? Was it not enough that I was separated from my Clan? Was it not enough to be made to be the Last? I have…I have _nothing_. No family, no memento – they all burned, first at the Conclave, then at Haven – and now? Now I have no vallaslin. I am nothing. No one. Do you think he laughs at me?”

The questions were not ones she wanted to have answered. She just needed to say them. And Solas was the only elf who could understand this. Sera would just laugh and say that now she looked less-elf-y and that was _good_ and Aurum did not want that. She wanted to know why, after everything she had given to the Creators, everything she had done in her life to appease Fen’Harel, everything she had done to bring him the respect he deserved…why she would be undone so completely.

There was nothing left of the elf who went to the Conclave at the request of her Keeper. Nothing.

She looked up at him, tears falling freely down her face, her blank, unmarked face. The welts from her self-inflicted injuries wept small drops of blood, and Solas reached to them, letting his magic soothe the hurts, healing them clean.

“ _Why_? Why would they do this to me? Why would _he_ do this to me?”

“It was not…We were trying to save you, da’len. We must have – it was not – I did not mean for you to be hurt by their loss. I only wanted you to be alive. I had to heal you. Whole.”

Aurum sighed, turning her head from his gentle touch on her cheek. Without her vallaslin, she felt more naked than if she had been standing in front of the entirety of the Inquisition in nothing _but_ her tattoos. The pain in Solas’s voice cooled her own agony and she reached to cover his hand with her own. Shame flushed through her, and despite the ache in her bones, she knew that she needed to assure her Companion that in this instance, she did not hold him responsible.

“It is not your fault, Solas. I am very thankful that you all brought me back. I did think I was going to die. Thank you for bringing me back. I should not…I should not be angry. I am alive. That much is good. I just…I just can’t handle this. I can’t handle all of this. Not anymore. I just…I had wanted to go back to my aravels, my Clan, my home after all of this. And now? I have nothing. No Clan would take me back like _this_. If this is not some cruel jape by the Creators I worship, if this is not the last God that walks having fun at my expense, then…then I don’t know. I just. I need to be alone. Solas, please, go.”

He stared at her as if she had burned him, swallowing down words that would do nothing except for hurt her, but quickly recovered and bowed.

“I will see you in the morning, then, Aurum?”

She said nothing, turning away from him, her hands tight at her sides. The mirror cracked through the middle, shattering her reflection into a thousand bright shards.

“Aurum -”

“Solas. Please. I want to be alone. I am alone already, and I would like time to come to terms with all of me being ripped away so easily by some sick foible of fate. I have been made into someone I cannot be, I have lost all of my family, everything that I treasured and held dear, and I wish to reconcile that. Alone. Please. Go away.”

* * *

The Inquisitor did her best to put on a brave-r face when she met with her advisors the next morning, standing before them unflinching, even as she felt their eyes on her unmarked skin. She did her best to keep her voice level and calm, to keep from turning her face away, from hiding behind the collar of her tunic. She was the Inquisitor, and even if that was a small comfort, she was not going to show her feelings in front of those people who were relying on her. The Inquisitor did not quail beneath the gazes of her Advisors merely because she had lost her tattoos.

The meeting was done, and she dismissed the advisors, standing very still as they moved around her. Morrigan paused at her side, waiting until the other three had left, looking to the Inquisitor with a question in her golden eyes.

“Morrigan, please. Not now. I will answer questions, but not now,” the Inquisitor murmured beneath her breath.

The Witch of the Wilds inclined her head gracefully and turned towards the door.

“Tis a good moon for a hunt, Aurum. Mayhaps you should consider it. There are many fine things to hunt in this area.”

The Inquisitor sighed, but said nothing until she heard the door click shut behind her. Her fingers curled into the map beneath her palms, and she had to bite her tongue until it bled to staunch her sudden _need_ to see it all burn around her.

“Would that I could, Morrigan,” Aurum whispered to the emptiness of the War Room.

Aurum?

That name belonged to the First. The First who wore the skin of the Wolf, and now feared that she was unworthy of very thing she had taken within her. How could she bear to wear it when she had nothing to justify it? She was nothing, no one, and alone. Her tattoos had been to remind her what happened when wolves left their packs, and she had worn Fen’Harel’s marks to guide her on the path that would bring her Clan, her _People_ together. She could not bear the loneliness.

And here she was.

The scream that scorched the back of her throat would _never_ be unleashed. Not within the boundaries of Skyhold, nor within any ‘true’ place of Thedas. She would swallow it down to join its innumerous brethren deep in her gut, and when she dreamed that night, her mindscape would be fury and wrath and sorrow. The Fade held no comfort anymore. No. No comfort. No rest. Nothing but memories. Memories she could not decide if she wanted to keep forever, or forget immediately. Was it truly better to remember and be in pain, than to forget and never know again?

She shook her head. Regardless. She needed to think. She needed to think and plan and work so that she could ignore the way it felt like her own magic was trying to claw her apart from the inside. She needed to hunt. Morrigan was right. She needed to hunt and howl and run and – and – and –

Her fingers were gouging claw-marks into the tough wood of the table, and she pulled them away as soon as she realized what she was doing. Her fingernails were already broken and bloody, and her new habit of breaking things with nothing but her hands was going to eventually cost her some mobility in her fingertips if she did not cease it soon. She settled for curling her hands into fists, the pinpricks and flashes of pain keeping her focused. She had designated missions for everyone outlined battle plans so that they might better understand where Corypheus would go next.

She had done her duty. Aurum had done what the Inquisitor would do. That was good.

The door opened behind her, and she merely flicked her still-whole ear backwards to catch the cadence of steps and breath that the intruder bore. To say that she was surprised to hear Cullen was an understatement. They had been…avoiding each other. Perhaps that was not correct to say. She had been avoiding him, and doing _such_ a good job of it all. Until now.

Another thing to work on, then. The Inquisitor should not be so easily found when she does not want to be. The Inquisitor meets with people when and if she chooses to meet with them. That is the right way to be the Inquisitor.

She did not turn to face Cullen, nor give acknowledgement of his presence, other than crossing her arms to hide the dripping blood from the cuts in her palms.

He stalked to her right, or walked? Perhaps he was just walking. It does not matter. She was obsessed by not paying attention to him. Not giving in to the yowling beneath her calm exterior (the Inquisitor should be calm in all manners and matters), not giving in to the urge to turn on him and scream and demand and _push_ all of his sore spots like he had been doing to her. But she did not. The Inquisitor must not do those sorts of things. The Inquisitor was more than her base needs and desires and wants. The Inquisitor would not care for her War Commander. That was inappropriate, improper. The Inquisitor would not –

“Aurum?”

His voice was closer than she would have cared for, and she took a quick step to the side and away from him, her ears flaring angrily. He had come too close. The presumed familiarity bred contempt in her heart. How dare he? She was the _Inquisitor_. He should have known better.

“Yes, Commander Rutherford?”

The formality tasted like acid on her tongue.

Aurum decided she liked it.

“I…I wanted to see if you were well.”

“Thank you for your concern, Commander. I am well. Is that all?”

Ah, the bitterness soothed her. It was a petty thing, but there were no rules against the Inquisitor being petty. Josephine, at least, seemed to encourage it betimes, and the Inquisitor could find some sort of enjoyment in it. Cullen sucked air in through his teeth, clearly not expecting the reaction he was getting from her.

“Aurum, I-”

“Commander, is there a purpose to you being here? I am considering troop movements at the moment, and would like to have time to think on my own.”

She was brutal, cutting through his thought process with the ease of a knife carving flesh from bone. The sick thrill trilled in her chest. Victory, brutality, all masked with the thin veneer of efficiency. Madame de Fer would undoubtedly be proud.

“Aurum, please. I know that your vallaslin was important to you.”

Her breath caught in her throat. All at once, it was like she was choking on her own blood again, lain out on the altar of Adamant, bleeding beneath a hole in the Veil, wishing for death to come so that the pain would leave her and she could breathe again, even as magic wormed desperately through her flesh to keep her from passing on. But now, she drew breath, and her blank skin marked her as broken. Flawed. Worthless.

“Commander. I do not wish to discuss this. My heritage is utterly incomprehensible to you, and to say that those tattoos meant much to me would be putting such a minor significance to them that I would consider your statement to be nearly heinous in its oversimplification.”

“I am _trying_ to unde-”

She turned on him, crowding into his personal space all at once. A low growl rumbled in her chest, a reminder of the beast that lurked in her magic, and her lips pulled back to reveal teeth that were sharper than they had any right to be.

“You are not _trying_ anything. You are succeeding at raising my ire, you are succeeding at making it hard to keep my emotions in check. You are doing many things, and merely _trying_ is not one of them. Now leave.”

For a moment, it looked as if she had won out, that Cullen would leave her be and she would be free to stand in her thoughts without having anyone comment or, Creato-…or…or Hells forgive her, _look_ at her. But that moment passed, and his golden eyes flashed dangerously. Some unhelpful part of her mind remembered that Cullen was as much a predator as she was, even if he did not wear the skins as she did.

“You have been avoiding me for weeks, and now, _now_ that you have lost something important to you, you won’t even talk to me?” he snarled, stepping closer to her.

“You have been busy entertaining _others_ for the past weeks. Mind your tone, Commander. I am the Inquisitor, and I will not suffer you to speak to me like that.”

“Yes, and you are also Aurum. You are Aurum, and you have been through _so much_ and I want to make sure you are well.”

“Aurum died when the Anchor was forced upon her when she tried to do what was right and she was imprisoned by the Inquisition. She died again when Haven burned with the few things she had left to remember her Clan. She died again in the avalanche that stole Haven from sight. And again when her Clan did. And _again_ , when her vallaslin, and her markings were taken from her. There is _nothing_ left of Aurum. I am the Inquisitor because that is all you _fucking shems_ have seen fit to leave me with. Go. Away.”

Cullen stared at her, and Aurum turned away from him, her hands clenched anew. Blood scented the air and he looked down to her hands. She hastily healed the few cuts there, leaving nothing but a few more pinkened scars that would fade over the next few days.

“Aurum, I’m…”

“Commander. Please go. I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

“No, I’m not leaving, Aurum. Not unti-”

“You have no right to give me commands, Cullen! None!” she screamed, spinning back to face him.

Her magic crackled in the air, ominous and threatening. She was furious and Cullen was just standing there placidly, waiting for her tantrum to subside. The cool gaze he leveled at her only made her temper flare the brighter and she snarled, baring teeth and fang and jutting her face up near his own. Cullen did not even blink, his gaze steel and ice.

“You and your Inquisition have taken _everything_ from me. Everything. I cannot be who _I_ am, I must be who you all think me to be. Do I have a place to worship my gods? No. But we sure as fuck have to have a Chantry and a huge statue of your Burned Goddess and to constantly be putting up with what you Andrastians think is proper. Do I have a place to practice my magic? No, not without you sending some fucking Templars to watch over me, to make sure I’m doing things the way _you_ think they should be done. I cannot go hunt, I cannot go pray, I cannot wander I cannot even ‘get away with’ not wearing fucking shoes because it would be improper. You and your people have dragged me all across Thedas, doing everything in your fucking power to keep me here, and keep me from being able to be _me_ so that you would never have the unfortunate situation of trying to explain my **savage** ways to the people you want to be impressed by your own titles.”

“You can leave whenever you want, Aurum. No one is tying you here, apparently,” Cullen snapped bitterly, his lip curling up.

“And go _where_ , Cullen? My Clan is dead, my vallaslin is gone and I have nothing except this fucking Keep. This building of stone and metal and steel that grates at my fucking bones and I am trapped here. The walls all close in, their presence rasps, and echoes in my fucking teeth. I want to howl and **scream** and I _can’t_ because I’m trapped here. What would you have me do, then? Everything about this place gets under my skin and claws its way back out. I am nothing and you would take even more from me. I have nothing but this fucking place. Nothing.”

Tears stung at the corners of her eyes and Aurum swiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her tunic. The Inquisitor did not cry when her emotions were reaching up from her gut to strangle her. She took another step away from him, reaching up to run her hands through her too-short mane of hair, leaving it sticking up wildly in her wake. A half-hysterical laugh slipped out of her lips and she was quick to cover her mouth. She did not want to start this. Not that it was not already starting, but the anger was bleeding into panic and –

“Aurum, you have…me.”

His voice was firm, but soft, hesitant. He did not reach for her, keeping his hands clasped on his sword’s hilt, but he looked to her, with sorrow dancing behind his golden eyes. Aurum stared. There was a heartbeat of a pause, where she stared at him, unblinking, unmoving. A rage so acute that it forced her to shake rose in her gut and her words came out a curse.

“How _dare_ you.”

Her magic sparked through the air, shimmering dangerously. He recoiled as if she had hit him physically, instead of just sneering words. She brushed past him, her anger boiling beneath her skin. He had the gall to reach for her, his breath sticking in his throat, a pained sound starting there. Aurum danced out of his grasp and stormed to the door to the War Room. She could not be here. She could not listen to _Cullen_ of all people talk about what they had had. She had seen him with the other.

She threw the door open and nearly ran face-first into the ample bosom of the raven-haired woman. Aurum snarled, and twisted out of her path. The woman simpered at her and swept into the War Room, her hips swaying provocatively and the cloak clasped around her neck flaring dramatically. Aurum followed the woman with her eyes, trying to place the sudden odd flush of magic that prickled at the back of her neck, and then down through her body. Cullen did his best to keep his eyes on Aurum, his mouth opening to call her back, but as soon as the woman drew closer to him, his gaze centered solely on her. His hands reached for her, resting gently on her hips, pulling her close to him. He stared at her like a man enchanted, his face open and adoring.

Aurum sneered, and turned her head away. Out of the very corner of her eye, she saw a curl of blue creep through the gold of his eyes. She paused in the doorway, tilting her head to the side. She sighed, trying to rectify what she saw with what she _knew_. The nagging sensation of wrong, of knowing – she _knew_ that woman, she swore it to the Creators and back that she _knew_ that woman, but her mind could not connect the woman to where they had interacted before.

“Cullen, darling, come with me, come away from here, show me that little lake you were talking about. We can go be alone out there,” the woman purred, pulling on Cullen’s fur mantle and wiggling herself closer to him.

The voice crashed everything into place, clarity rising up out of the haze of anger, self-doubt and loathing that had been dogging her. She knew that voice. She knew that person. She knew that feeling that rose in her. She knew what it _felt_ like. Aurum spun on the ball of her foot, reaching for the knife in the back of her belt. She reached out, wrapping her hand in the cloak of the woman and yanking backwards, her knife flashing out to slit the cloak.

The woman screamed for the Commander, Cullen cursed, and Aurum knew she had been right.

Her fingers came away sticky with blue. She rubbed her thumb through the lyrium, smirking at her vindication. The woman’s screeching rose in volume as Aurum brandished her lyrium-slicked blade threateningly.

“Now, now, now. Step away from the Commander,” Aurum whispered, her voice sounding strangely calm, even to her own ears.

The woman took a step closer to Cullen, pulling a knife from her skirts and jabbing it threateningly at his neck. It was hardly an effective move, because Cullen was already backing away, reaching for his sword, even through the haze that had dogged him. Still, the almost-assassin pressed close, trying to be a threat.

“ **STOP.** ”

Her voice shook the room with power, and the woman froze, trembling. Aurum strode forward and tore the knife from the woman’s hand, throwing it to the corner of the War Room, and then tore the lyrium-leaking cloak from her shoulders. Aurum abandoned her own knife and grabbed the woman by the throat, forcing her back and pinning her down to the War Table.

“Cullen, go get Leliana. I want this assassin interrogated. Tell her to fetch Florianne as well. This one was at the Winter Ball. Skulking. I saw her, but the masks made it difficult. I’m willing to bet she has more lyrium in her clothing.”

The woman snarled, thrashing against Aurum’s hold. Aurum’s response was quick and brutal, her fingers tightening until the woman was choking and whining, clawing down Aurum’s arms in a vain attempt to get the Inquisitor to let her go. Aurum’s response was a wolfish smile. This would work. She can hunt. This would work wonderfully, but…

“Cullen.”

Aurum turned to look back at him, holding the woman still with one arm. The Commander stared at the blue puddle forming around the woman’s cloak. His gaze was fixed on the blue liquid, and he nervously licked his lips. He took a hesitant step towards the lyrium, his hand reaching for it.

“Commander Rutherford. At attention, _now_.”

Cullen straightened and gave his attention to Aurum immediately. His eyes were wide and she could see sweat on his skin, and panic in his body. He was breathing harshly, his hands not sure where they should be. His nerves were getting the better of him, but she had his whole attention for the moment.

“Go get Leliana. Tell her what happened. I will handle this one. Go.”

He snapped her a salute and left, leaving her alone with the almost-assassin. Florianne’s handmaiden. Florianne’s second, whatever she was to Florianne, was beneath her, still spitting mad and clawing ineffectively down Aurum’s arm. Aurum tightened her hand on the throat until the woman stilled.

“Now be still. Be still, little assassin. I have a game for you,” Aurum purred, leaning down into the woman.

The howling madness in her skin grew ever louder. This was what she wanted. This was what she needed. This was what she craved. A hunt. A hunt a hunt a hunt a _hunt_. She sighed into the poor woman’s ear. The assassin shivered beneath her. Aurum’s thrill went deeper. The darkness roared.

_Yes yes yes yes._

“I am going to let you up. You are going to run. If you make it to the King’s Road, I will cease my pursuit. If you cannot make it, I am going to drag you back here and give you to my fair Lady Leliana and impress upon her that your death is the only acceptable end to the interrogation. If I am feeling benevolent, I will ensure your death, _when_ it comes, is swift and merciful. If not, I will let them bleed you in increments. You have anything you think will help you. Take a mount. It is seven miles from the front gates of Skyhold to the nearest bend in the King’s Road. Take a knife. Take a sword. Take a shield. I will be hunting you and I want this to be…” Aurum leaned back, staring down at the shaking assassin with her eyes bright and sparkling with magic. “… **Good**.”

The assassin’s defiance melted away and was quickly replaced with absolute terror. There was a hunter above her, and the only thing the assassin could ever be was prey. Aurum’s hand tightened briefly on the woman’s throat, before relaxing and stepping away from the assassin. Aurum closed her eyes, and shivered. Her magic rippled beneath her skin. _Creators_ , this was going to be fun. Adrenaline surged in her blood.

“You have two minutes head start. Run.”


	21. A Wolf's Skin

She heard the assassin bolt, racing for the exit. Aurum stood very still for a moment, letting the thrill of the hunt consume her.

 _Gods yes_.

Slowly, carefully, thoughtfully, she turned towards the door. Her shoulders rolled forwards, her mouth hanging slack, her magic roaring around her. Aurum stooped to remove her boots, kicking them into the corner of the War Room. She walked, calmly, after the fleeing assassin, disregarding the lyrium-soaked cloak. That would be something to clean up later. For now, however, there were more pressing matters.

She could feel the taste of fear on her tongue. The assassin was afraid. Good. Fear was good. She could track fear.

Aurum tracked the woman to the gates of Skyhold, pausing there. She had made a promise. Two minutes. A horse was racing away, towards the King’s Road. Aurum stalked back and forth at the perimeter of the gate, her breaths hot and harsh in their exhalations. Her eyes were bright and wide and there was a near-manic grin on her face. Her heartbeat only sounded out the huntsman’s song. She wanted blood. She wanted to hunt. She would hunt.

Her mouth hung open and her tongue lolled out. The seconds ticked by, a mental countdown to when she could run.

_Hunt. Hunt. Hunt. Hunt. Hunt._

“Aurum, what is going on?”

“Hunting. Shut up. I’m hunting. Back off. I will return.”

She did not even turn her head to look at whoever was talking to her. It was not important. She was hunting. Hunting and that was all that mattered. Hunting and howling and hunting again. Her hands clenched and unclenched sporadically. It was the least she could do to keep the rush of energy in her from exploding out in a maelstrom of fire. She paced, she twitched, and she watched, still counting in her head. Two minutes. Two minutes. She had promised two minutes. Two minutes were almost gone.

“Aurum!”

“Be _silent_. I am _hunting_ ,” she hissed. Lightning cracked in the air. “Two minutes are up. Hunts start.”

Aurum exhaled, and breathed in the hunt. Snow hit her bare feet, the complaints of her confused companions fell away, and then there was nothing except the hunt. The hunt, the hunt, the _hunt_. She was powerful, she was unstoppable. Her fur bristled, her teeth were sharp and she could do anything. She could smell her prey’s fear. She knew where her prey was going. There was nothing but the hunt.

She had borne Andruil’s vallaslin truly. She was a hunter. She may wear Fen’Harel’s skin, but she was a _hunter_. The path to her prey was as clear as the full moon on a clear night. The tracks of the horse in the snow, the smell of her prey (fear and lyrium and fear again), the cold air against her fur, the crunch of snow, the cawing of ravens, all of it settled her into the madness and rhythm therein. Her lungs filled with air that was bitterly cold, and the pads of her paws found purchase where lesser creatures would find none.

Her strides were long, her steps were sure, and when she finally found the throat of the one she sought, the exultation of blood and prey-found rushed through her. The screaming was a balm on the beast but it was not enough. She needed more. But the prey could run no more and part of her hated her prey for that. This was not what she had wanted. This was pathetic. This was too fast, this was not _enough_ for her to want to shed her monstrosity.

The horse was long gone, fear making it balk and flee for the safety it knew of the long-distant stables. Prey was left alone. Left with _her_. It held a hand to their bloody throat, and she could taste the magic in its blood. It had been drinking lyrium too, then. All the better to make the lyrium-starved Lion crave it. Increase dosage of lyrium in the blood and body and clothes slowly so that the lion would not notice until he was already hopelessly ensared, relating it with the feeling of soothing. Smart prey. Not smart enough to really count. Too close to a mage and the entire plan unraveled. Too close to predator and prey was worthless. Smart prey-master, then.

She snapped at its ankles. It took a step back, away from the boundary of her territory, deeper, closer to the den. Yes. This one needed to be returned to the den. The den where the raven queen waited. The raven would know what to do with the prey. Another snap of her teeth, and she caught the fabric of its skirts. It backed up. It needed to run away, back to the den. She snapped, it retreated. She growled, it stumbled away.

This prey was not interesting. It should have been. But it was not. It was stupid. It was slow. It was not _fun_. Growling, she drove it back to the den. Slowly. Painfully. Blood painted her muzzle and throat but it was not her blood. It was its blood. It tasted of lyrium’s sickly sweetness, and the desperation of adrenaline.

The den loomed over her head, and she snarled to drive prey inside. It stumbled, screaming, reaching for the Lion, begging for him to save it, to remember how they felt about each other, remember how it had promised – but the Lion did not move, staring down coldly at the prey, recognizing and condemning it to the fate she had already decided was proper.

Lion stared at her, lifting his eyes to her own, and she brushed by, her shoulder brushing his sword’s hilt. She could feel the stares of her pack on her. The Lion, the Dragon, the Bear, the Hawk, the Dog, the Raven and the Spider. That shook her out of the depths of the hunt. _It_ was under the control of those who belonged to her pack, and so she did not need to hunt anymore. She saw the gold-eyed one smiling, and all at once the world was expanding outwards, away from the hunt and she looked up to look the Lion… _Cullen_ in the eye. Cullen. Dorian. Bull. Josephine. Varric. Leliana. Morrigan. Her Companions. No one else, however. Just them – the others had been tasked with keeping the underlings from being underfoot.

She knew this, and she turned away, looking back to the wilderness that surrounded her den. She still wished to hunt. _This_ hunt was over, however. But she should give these pack-mates the courtesy of knowing that. She sat, her tail thumping merrily on the dusty earth. It took long moments for her to recall what she was when she was not this. Her ears flicked back and forth, giving her attention to the closest member of her pack, and then the next. She knew them. She knew who they were. It was just hard to remember who she was. She knew who she was. Just not what she should be. This form was comfortable. Strong. Warm. Dangerous.

Someone’s hand rested gently on the crown of her head, and she turned to look at them. It felt nice, the way they petted her. Her white fur was only somewhat matted with blood, and the person gently picked through it, detangling some of the worst matting. It was hard for her to place the scent of this pack-mate. He did not smell like the others did. Dully, she remembered, Cole. Ah, it was Cole!

Her tail thumped all the harder and she butted her head against his. He laughed the same dry way he always did and hugged her close, petting down her neck and back. It helped, oddly enough. The need to hunt slowly bled from her, and while she was still rather uncomfortable with everyone watching, it seemed that Cole did not mind in the slightest. He held her as close as one can hold a massive wolf and said nothing, just held her and stroked her fur. Aurum settled down back into her own skin, and sat contentedly as Cole still hugged her close. She returned the gesture, pulling the spirit-boy tight to her.

When she finally pulled away from him, the smoke that accompanied the changing of forms was still wreathed around her and she waved fruitlessly at the tendrils that remained. Blood stuck to the skin of her throat, and she made a swipe at it to try and wipe it away. It, of course, remained mostly unmoved, humming with lyrium, waiting to be used.

“Well. That was hardly entertaining at all,” she offered to the crowd. Silence greeted her. Awed silence, but silence nonetheless.

“Leliana, please interrogate our friend there. I’m sure she will have some interesting information for us. With the lyrium she’s been dosing herself with, withdrawal for her should set in pretty soon. Maybe then she will know the pain she caused our Commander before she dies.”

Leliana smirked, and inclined her head, a graceful bow from one of the Hands of the Divine. Aurum knew that the assassin’s moments on this side of the Veil were numbered. Good. Her prey had been very unsatisfying. Yes, it had given her a momentary escape, yes, it had begun her on a path that she should have been walking for a while (her pack, her motley _pack_ , her Clan, her Inquisition), yes many things, but the hunt had still been unsatisfactory and she had not had the honor of the kill. The raven would kill better, regardless.

She flicked her ears in moderate irritation, not minding now how one of them was missing a piece. It was just how things were. After shapeshifting, it was very difficult to really care about things as minor as that. The advantage of a second skin to escape into was that it often left the mage who had changed there and back in a trance-like state afterwards. Aurum felt at ease. The terrors all fell away and she was left with a suffusing contentment. She felt more like herself after being something else.

“I’m going to go have a bath and eat. I will be in my rooms if anyone wishes to speak.”

And with that, Aurum calmly wiped the corners of her mouth with her fingers (she could still taste the lyrium there), straightened her back, shook her head, and began the long walk back to her rooms. If anyone noticed that her gait was different, that her feet were falling nearly precisely in a line in front of each other, that she was walking with an eerily predative air around her, no one said anything.

* * *

Aurum had washed herself clean of the blood and lyrium. She had had the servants bring her a massive meal full of meats and vegetables, and eaten it in short order. Hunting made her hungry, after all. Skyhold bustled and bristled with gossip, as it certainly would have had to after all that had happened that day. The Inquisitor was a shape-changer, the woman Cullen had been seeing was an assassin, The Inquisitor was definitely _not_ a shape-changer she just had the loyalty of the animals as Andraste had done, she had defended the Commander from a demon in human form, and so on and so forth. As long as the soldiers had something to gossip about, they were just fine.

She had wrapped a simple, thin robe around her still-wet body and sat in the chair closest to the dormant fireplace, not really expecting anyone to come visit her. She had undoubtedly terrified them, or something similar to that. It was not very often that one was revealed to be a shape-changer after hunting down an almost-assassin and chasing them back to Skyhold. Let alone to have a form as massive as Aurum’s wolf was. There was a difference between a wolf and what Aurum was though. Dread Wolf. Dire Wolf. She had taken what had once been her tattoos for a reason.

It was close enough to assuage any doubts she had had about…certain things.

Tomorrow would be the day for seeking her Companions out and answering questions they would have. Tomorrow, she would face them all with an unmarked face and do her best to never quail from their gaze again. She was Aurum. She was the Inquisitor. She was Dalish. Her tattoos were not all there was to her. It was not comfortable to be without them, and Aurum doubted she would ever stop pressing her fingers into the flesh where her vallaslin had once been and mourning their loss. It was not comfortable to know that her Clan was gone and that she could never seek the asylum of another clan. Even if she was a mage unmatched and more than capable of being the First of another, larger or smaller Clan, she would not…could not do it. Not anymore. Not after losing her tattoos. It would not be the same.

She sighed.

Someone knocked at her door. Confused, Aurum called for the person to enter, rising out of her chair and gesturing backwards to light the fire behind her. She wrapped her robe tighter around herself, and turned to the door.

“…Inquisitor?”

Her heart stuttered.

“Commander Cullen.”

She felt a blush creep across her cheeks. She had said some…very bad things to him. How he could stand to come talk to her, she was not sure. It was too hard for her to look him in the eye, so she settled for keeping her gaze locked on the intricate whirling designs of his armor. She shifted nervously from foot to foot, and turned her head away as Cullen came closer to her. This was not a conversation she was ready to have.

“I am sorry for how I spoke to you earlier, Commander. I was out of line, and there is no way for me to truly apologize for what I said. Even though I was coming from a place of anger and hurt I should have never acted out as I did. It was inappropriate of me to say what I did, and I should have never said the things I -”

He closed the distance between the two of them in two long strides and gently, gently, kissed her, hesitantly placing his hands on her shoulders. Aurum was still for just a moment too long, and Cullen stepped back from her quickly, his face bright red. He reached up to rub the back of his neck and very pointedly did not look at her state of half-dress. Aurum stared at him. Absentmindedly, she reached up to touch her fingers to her mouth. He bit his lip and took a deep breath before trying to speak again.

“I-I-I’m…Maker I’m sorry for that Aurum. For all of that, for her and falling for her trick and I didn’t mean to-”

It was her turn to silence him with a kiss, and she did so with such hesitant gentleness that he did not register the touch for a few seconds, still talking against her lips, until, with a shocked sound, he realized what was happening and wrapped his arms tightly around her, pulling her flush against his armor. He kissed her hungrily this time, devouring every sound he could pull out of her with his lips and teeth and tongue. Aurum succumbed to his kiss, pulling him closer by his hair.

He made the most delightful sound at that, stepping so that he could be closer to her, forcing her to take a step back, and then he was driving her back towards her desk, sweeping all of her reports and papers off of it, pushing her up onto it, spreading her legs wide so he could push himself flush to her hips and grind against her. She loved every moment of it, her anger and rage forgotten on the promise of more kisses. Aurum whimpered when he pulled away, and he smirked against her lips.

“Apology accepted, Aurum,” he whispered, bumping her nose with his. He swept in for another kiss - one that nearly seared her to the bone.

“Ass. You are an _ass,_ Cullen,” Aurum growled back, nipping at his lip. “You are forgiven for your part in this as well. Next time, I will try and notice that someone is dosing themselves with lyrium to get your attention.”

Cullen chuckled drily, his grip tightening on her for just a moment. She felt the tension in him coil, and then relax away. He kissed her again, before dropping his head to her shoulder and resting there.

“Next time, I think I will have you on my arm instead of all the way across the room. She certainly would not have gotten so close if you had been there from the beginning.”

Aurum hummed, and nuzzled his hair. She pressed a kiss to his rounded shemlen ear, blinking away an errant tear that had formed at the corner of her eye. Her anger, her rage, the stress, all of it vanished as soon as he was with her and she did not want to think too hard on why it worked that way. He was safe, she had been outlandishly stupid, and...well, they could talk about it later.

“As long as you promise not to step on my toes. Now come on, I think I need one of those reports that you just scattered everywhere.”

He laughed and held her close for just a moment longer before turning to help her clean the mess he had made. She wiggled off the desk, and began replacing the papers back where they had been, and not at all staring at Cullen's pert ass.

Her heart beat slowly, calming down now that she was with him. It did not matter that arousal burned in her blood, or that she was still aching for more of the hunt. Being near him calmed her in more ways than just one, and as they worked, simple touches passed between them. His fingers briefly brushed her wrist, her waist, the back of her neck as she passed by, and Aurum leaned into the touches.

Each simple touch made her body sing for him, and it did not take too many more of those simple, hesitant, quick touches for Aurum to turn back to Cullen, grab his mantle and pull him into another kiss. Cullen made a small sound of pleased surprise before placing his hands on her hips and kissing her back. Aurum’s heart fluttered in her chest, beating against her ribs hard enough to hurt. She pressed herself closer to Cullen, and her heart stilled its wild palpitations.

For the briefest of moments, she _felt_ her heartbeat and his match each other’s. His song and hers, for one breathless second, were one. Aurum knew the significance of her song, she knew it because it was her magic and her magic was the core of her being. When her heart resumed beating normally, Aurum could not help the way her knees went weak and she melted into Cullen.

He pulled away first, and Aurum’s sound of protest was masked by Cullen clearing his throat. He tried to step away from her, and she followed, not wanting to be parted from him so soon. Something…impossible had just happened. She did not want him to go away. Not yet. She needed to know more.

“Aurum, we should…I mean, I need – they’ll wonder where I am. I should. I mean. I should go. I – I’ll see you tomorrow?” he mumbled, blushing.

Aurum nodded, leaning back towards Cullen, watching his lips more than listening to his words. He leaned in, and she stole a kiss from him, flicking her tongue against his mouth, to try and tempt him into another kiss, another moment, just one more because she needed to know if what she just felt was real.

But he stepped away from her, holding her hands gently in his so she could not reach for him again.

“Aurum, _please_?”

She nodded, and stepped away from him, looking to her bed with a sigh. There was a need in her, one that pulsed in time with her heart and his, but Cullen was stepping away, blushing still. She had to let him leave. He was uncomfortable and she knew she was just looking for some manner of comfort from him that he was, perhaps, not ready to give. Too much had happened.

And too much was still unresolved.

Cullen left her with a short bow to excuse himself, and Aurum stood in her room, alone with her thoughts, and a heart that beat to a different drummer’s timing.

With a flick of her wrist, she extinguished the candles burning in her room. It took a mere thought to have the door lock behind Cullen. She stood where he had left her. Her lips tingled where they had touched his. She pressed her fingertips together, trying to chase the way the weight of his hands had felt against hers. As much as she wanted to stand there and think about what had happened with Cullen just then.

She closed her eyes and pressed her hands over her heart.

There was much for her to do.


	22. The Trip to Wycome

“I am going to Wycome.”

The words came out in a rush, before she could hold them back in. They were standing at the War Table, and Josephine had been working on walking them through the latest political intrigue that the Inquisition needed to be embroiled in. Aurum had spoken out of turn, interrupting Josephine. She knew it was rude to do so, but the words had come out before she could coach herself back into calmness.

“Of course Inquisitor, we can have that set up and arranged within the wee-”

“Now. And alone,” she grit out against the storm in her chest.

Josephine made a startled sound under her breath, which was quickly echoed by Cullen and Leliana. Aurum met their gazes and held them each in turn, not turning away until they did. There was a challenge in the way she stared them down. She was not going to move on her position in this matter. This was important to her. She needed to do it.

Above them, in her private quarters, resting next to her (empty) morning glass of mulled wine was the report on Wycome. She had read it, reread it, read it again, and then made her decision. She needed to do this. Her Clan was dead, the people she had loved as family were gone, and she owed them a last penance. _Vengeance_. This was as much for their sake as for her own. Aurum needed to make peace with what had happened.

“Inquisitor, that is not…wise.”

“Be that as it may, Commander. I will not be accepting the company of anyone on my journey. I can outpace any pursuers and evade any attempts at capture. I want to do this on my own. Please.”

Cullen bit his lip and averted his gaze. She had a point. Aurum was a shape-changer and they knew it. There was no way she could be caught.

“You have to realize that you are putting us in a delicate position, Inquisitor. If you are injured, or captured, we will not be able to provide assistance if you are alone. Our allies…they may not understand.”

Aurum sighed.

“I cannot be their Herald. You have to know that Josephine. After Adamant…I told you that the spirit who had helped me at the Conclave was Justinia, not Andraste. I don’t want to be their symbol. I don’t want to be the symbol of a faith I do not follow to people who think they can call me “knife-ear” behind my back without me hearing them as soon as I have given them what they asked for. If it offends them to have me mourn, perhaps they are not meant to be my ally.”

Josephine smiled serenely and looked down at her writing.

“Well said, Inquisitor. Leliana, do you have anything to add?”

“Only that I would prefer if we had a meeting arranged to ensure your safety, Inquisitor. Not that we do not have the utmost faith that you can defend yourself, but if I knew ahead of time where you were meant to be and you knew where you could send word if something had gone wrong, it would soothe some fears, I am sure.”

“Redcliffe then. It is far enough from Wycome that I do not fear for being followed, and close enough to here that I do not feel as if it would be too stressful on anyone to make the trip there.”

Leliana nodded. No one else said anything, and Aurum sighed, exhaling her stress over this particular part of her trip. Now all she had to do was work up the courage to actually go out and do what needed to be done. It was more than doing what needed to be done, though. It was doing what was right, what was just, what was proper, and it was all done so that she could finally truly be at peace, and let her Clan rest in peace.

“Is there any other business to tend to? I would like to leave as soon as possible and any business that does not require my attention will not receive it.”

There was a lull, for a moment, and then the few things that definitively needed her attention were brought forward. Without rushing or trying to appear as if she were rushing, Aurum looked over the potential movements and deployments of their assets and made her decisions known. She was the Inquisitor, and her decisions were, after all, final, so business was completed within the hour, and then Aurum was off.

She did nothing so crass as to bolt, or to make unnecessary haste, but she had something she wanted to do, and she wanted to have it done as soon as possible. Most of her preparations had been made already, it was now a mere matter of managing to escape Skyhold without attracting any hangers-on. She truly did want to do this on her own. On her own, for her own people. The People. She owed them that much before she began to truly settle into her new home.

Because Skyhold would be home.

This building, these people, this land, it was her home. She would be a nomad no longer. She had a home. A place. She belonged. Or, she would. She would belong. She still stood apart for now. Aurum may have made nice words with her mouth about making _them_ her Clan, but there was something vital still missing in those words. They were still _actions_ that had to be done in order to truly ratify them as belonging together. Well, as much as this ragtag, heretical Clan could ever really belong together.

Aurum smiled to herself, and jogged up the stairs to her quarters. She needed to grab her pack and then she could head out. Idly, she thought about whether or not riding her hart would be a good idea, or if she should take a slightly less conspicuous mount, but her thoughts were interrupted.

“Aurum, dearest, where do you have it in your pretty little head that you’re going?”

She did not stop, but smiled broadly. Of course Leliana would have told Dorian on her way back up to the Rookery. Of everyone she knew, Dorian was probably the most likely to be able to sway her opinions, and Leliana knew that. Just not on this matter.

“Out, Dorian. I do not know when I will be back, but I have to tend to something.”

“Well then, let me collect my things and get Bull and Varric and hen we can all head out.”

Aurum made a non-committal sound under her breath and continued on her path. Dorian followed behind, still dogging her with questions and accusations.

“You are not leaving Skyhold alone, Aurum. Despite what you might think, you-”

Aurum tuned him out. He meant well, she knew. He wanted her to be safe and happy and while she appreciated that immensely, he was not going to convince her to take him, or anyone else with her. They may all know where she was going, and perhaps her friends would try and head her off, thinking to support her with their physical presence, but it would not be helpful. She had to do this alone.

She was not going to extrapolate on that to them, however. Not yet. Not until she was done with her vengeance and mourning. When she came back, when she came home to them, to be their Keeper in truth, then she would talk to Dorian about why she was doing this on her own, why she was insisting, why it was needed. He would learn, as her First.

But for now, he needed to learn that sometimes the Keeper would not tell the First everything. Not right away. Not when there were sensitive matters to tend to.

“Aurum I know you are not listening. I said about four things about Cullen’s ass and you did not blush even the once. Aurum. _Aurum_. Dammit, Aurum, fucking _listen_ to me!”

She slung her pack over her shoulder and hummed under her breath as Dorian continued to fret over her nonverbalization. Aurum noted that he was still guarding the stairs that led down to the rest of the keep. Silly man, thinking she would try something like that. There were other ways down from her room. Dorian followed her, still nagging, still nannering. It was endearing. Honestly, it was. He was worried, and his worrying always turned into long-winded lectures that never actually managed to go anywhere.

She was not wearing shoes, which must have allayed Dorian’s fear that she was going to run right away. Silly Tevene. He thought of her too much like the other shelmen did.

Ah, she should not think in terms of shemlen anymore. That would be unkind to her Clan. Her Clan would be her People. Even if they were not “of the People”, the argument can now be made that she was no longer of the People anyway.

It did not matter.

She wandered onto her porch, Dorian still following behind still. He maintained his position in between her and the door, still carrying on about how she had helped them, and now they wanted to help her and they were not going to let her do this alone. She did not really reply to him, regardless.

Wordlessly, she jumped up onto the railing that protected the common person from falling from her room into the gardens in front of the Chantry. Dorian spluttered, Aurum saluted him sharply, winked, and let herself fall backwards. Dorian reacted poorly, running forward to try and grab her and pull her back to safety.

“Aurum!”

He had no reason to worry. Her magic was already curling around her, and she had survived longer falls than that before. She threw ice to the ground, pulled it up towards her, and slid safely down its length. The shimmering spire collapsed immediately behind her. She turned and smirked up at a very confused Dorian, still standing at her porch’s railing.

Before he could raise the alarm and get her other Companions on her case, she ran. She heard him begin his shouting, and the shocked gasps of everyone around, but she was already intent upon her escape. She scaled the wall that separated the gardens from the main courtyards of Skyhold. As always, her footsteps were sure, and even when the wall was covered in ice (courtesy of an Altus who was not going to jump, but sure as hell was making a ruckus), she did not stumble.

The alarm had been raised, and Aurum bolted for the front gate. She whistled sharply for her mount, and heard the answering bellow from the Red Hart she rode nearly exclusively. It leapt the stable’s gate and thundered towards her. Aurum swung up onto the saddle and clicked her tongue at the dutiful beast. It galloped off; head down to sweep anyone who had fancy ideas about stopping Aurum out of their path.

The guardsmen dove out of her path and she stormed towards the King’s Road. She was going to get what she wanted, and she would not let anyone stand in her way. Wycome called to her, and while her friends wanted to help, she knew this was not something they could help with. Despite their urging to the contrary, despite every one of them thinking they could _do_ something, they could not. Their presence would only hinder her.

So she raced away, their cries fading into the distance, and sent a prayer to the Gods that could still hear that she was doing the right thing, and that this was not some cruel jape again.

Let this be the thing she does right.

Let this be what needs to be done.

Creators, let this be what will bring peace to her wounded heart.

* * *

The human pressed the dagger’s hilt into her hand, whispering the last words of her Clan, blessing her next course of action as only they could have. A chain wrapped around her neck, a weight settled against her sternum, not to be removed until she was done. The human knew much, and Aurum did not have the words to express her gratitude. Deshanna had been right to trust this one.

Aurum took a deep breath, bowed to the human who had been ever so helpful, and began her hunt.

* * *

The scout Leliana had sent to Redcliffe came back a day after the appointed meeting time with Aurum. They bore no missive, no letter, no word from the Inquisitor to allay any fears. All they could report was that she was alive, yes, and uninjured. But she had not spoken to the scout, or tried to communicate in any way, shape, or form. She had merely sat there, staring until the allotted time was up, and then she had left.

That was all.

The Advisors swallowed their worry down, and prepared to wait for the next five days for Aurum to return to the tavern.

* * *

The next meeting went the same way.

All the scout had to report was that Aurum now bore fresh cuts across her face, and was wearing armor that they had not seen before. But there was no new information. She did not speak, she did not attempt to communicate, she merely waited for the scout to acknowledge her as the Inquisitor, demonstrated that it was her by removing her left glove so the anchor could be seen, and then, again, got up and walked away without another word.

The scout was pumped for information, grilled and damn near interrogated by the Advisors, but there was quite simply no more information to give. She had not said anything, and even though the scout could give detailed information about what she was wearing and the type of wounds that were visible on her, there was simply nothing else to talk about. Without following Aurum, without tailing her movements, they could bring nothing else to report.

The Advisors considered the scouts words, and made plans to pry into just what it was that Aurum was doing. It was nearing two full weeks without any word from her, and the two appearances she had made left them asking more questions than they had answered.

* * *

The third meeting was short. Aurum arrived late, dark circles under her eyes, her skin sallow and eyes bleary. This time she did speak.

“I will be going home in two days.”

The Advisors counted the days, waiting for Aurum’s return. The work in Skyhold still needed to be done, and while the allotted two days came and went, they still needed to tend to their own duties in the Inquisitor’s absence.


	23. The Reunion

She returned as she said she would, striding into a meeting in the War Room as if it were any other day, and she had not been gone for nearly an entire month for reasons she had not told anyone. The dust and grime of the road still clung to her, but she went about conducting business as if no time had passed at all. When pressed about where she had been and more importantly what she had been doing, Aurum only responded with a tight smile and nothing more. She excused herself in favor of bathing, and assured them all that she would meet with them all separately as soon as she was done.

Cullen was doing his best to keep his mind on his work after that meeting. He was the Commander of the Inquisition, after all, and he had much to do. He could not sit and think about how her ner armor had fit her, how she had spoken with a commanding tone he had found himself missing. Troop movements were often long-winded matters where he tried to herd the bag of cats that were the commanded men. They did not backtalk, as that would be highly unprofessional and likely lead to them facing the Commander’s wrath, but for whatever reasons, the meetings always seemed to go overlong. New missives and information would come in at the most inopportune times, leading to meetings that dragged on as he tried to manage everything.

“Rylen’s men will monitor the situation.”

“Yes, ser. We will begin preparations at once.”

A scout came to hand him yet another missive, and Cullen skimmed it quickly, thankful that Josephine had impeccable handwriting, unlike his own.

“In the meantime, we’ll send soldiers to-”

Ever since he had taken this tower for his office and private quarters, Cullen had been growing more and more accustomed to listening carefully for any of the three doors opening, as it usually meant more work, or a panicked guardsman that needed his attention. The door opened, and he looked up, and had to stumble to find his words again.

“…assist with the relief effort.”

Aurum was lounging comfortably against the wall, arms crossed, and a smile playing around her lips. Pinkened new scars traced across the line of her left brow and cheek next to the old scars she had always born, but she was whole, and hale and in his office. His heart sang in his chest.

 _Aurum_.

She had changed into an open-necked tunic and tight leather breeches, and looked just as healthy as she had ever done. His eyes skimmed the neckline of her chosen outfit. For a moment, the veneer of professionalism he had to keep in front of his men wavered. Cullen indulged in the sight of her skin, the sight of _her_ after so long. He had not thought he could miss someone like he had missed her, but seeing Aurum again had clearly changed that thought.

“That will be all.”

The dismissal came easily to his lips. There was, of course, other work that needed to be done, more things that should be handled, but they could wait. His soldiers saluted, and left to go about their business. He followed them out, closing the door behind them. Almost immediately after that door closed, the one to his left opened, a scout holding another missive for him to look over, and with a quick glance to the still-grinning Aurum, Cullen reached for the offered report, and then dismissed that page as well. He tossed the half-read report down on his desk and looked back to Aurum.

“There’s always something else, isn’t there?” he sighed, standing close to her, but not presumptively so. The last time they had been alone – she had kissed him and made his blood burn in ways he was entirely certain one should not burn for Andraste’s Herald.

“Wish you were somewhere else, then?”

Maker, how he had missed hearing her voice. It was rougher than he remembered, tired, but it was still, undeniably, her. He shook his head, sighing ruefully.

“I barely made it away last time.”

Aurum’s smile broadened, but the gesture did not reach her eyes. It was a polite smile, not one meant in truth. Cullen had turned back to his desk, to look over the multitude of reports from all the branches that the Inquisition was currently fostering. Just the thought of reading through all of them that night was giving him a headache, but first – he had some things to say. The time Aurum had been away had given him time and distance to think about what was happening. What he wanted to happen. How it should happen.

“This war won’t last forever. When it started…I hadn’t considered much beyond our survival. But things are different now.”

Aurum walked up behind him, drawing close, but not unprofessionally so. She looked over the reports that were scattered there on his desk. This was not at all how she thought this conversation would go, since she had been gone for a while. Then again, she _had_ been gone for a while.

“What do you mean, Cullen?”

“I find myself wondering what will happen _after_. When this is over, I won’t want to move on. Not from you, Aurum.”

Hearing him say her name after so long brought the tiniest of blushes to her ears, and Aurum turned away to disguise the way her ears ticked towards him. Had he been Dalish, he would’ve recognized the intention behind the movement, but he wasn’t. Small blessings.

Cullen reached out to touch the side of her face with a gloved hand, and Aurum leaned into the soft gesture before he retracted his hand and walked back to his desk. There would be time enough to talk about where she had gone and what she had done. Right now, though, she was with Cullen. He cleared his throat, and hid his face from her in the guise of looking over the numerous reports.

“But I don’t know what you – that is, _if_ you…ah…”

His words failed him all at once, and he was fumbling for the threads of thought that had seemed so clear when he was moaning her name into his pillows in the nights she had been away.

“Cullen.”

He looked up to her, affording her the chance to slide in between his body and the desk, leaning lightly against the very sturdy piece of furniture. They were definitely too close for professionalism, intimately close. He leaned down to be closer to her, even as she leaned up to him, and his doubts about the situation began to drop away. Cullen dipped his head down to kiss her, and Aurum kissed him back, one hand wrapping around the back of his neck, the other fumbling backwards for purchase so she would not fall in an ungraceful heap atop of all of his papers.

She knocked a glass carafe clean off the desktop in her movements, and it shattered on the ground. Aurum flinched at the harsh sound, drawing away from Cullen for the barest of moments. He huffed a laugh at her, shook his head, and then reached back behind her to sweep all the reports off his desk, along with the wine glasses shattering against the floor.

Aurum opened her mouth to crack some sort of comment about him having a propensity for throwing reports off desks, but Cullen swept in for a demanding kiss before she could get her words out. He pushed her down onto his desk, and when she scooted back to give him some extra space, he took it in the most unexpected way, climbing up on top of the desk with her, pressing his hips down against hers, kissing her hungrily, pushing her further up his desk until she was lying flat and he was above her.

All she could think to do was to make an appreciative sound, which he greedily swallowed down. He stripped his gloves away as fast as he could, aching to touch her skin with his own. Cullen reached up to trace his thumbs down the length of her ears. Aurum gasped, arching her body up against the hard lines of his armor, and he pressed down against her again, pinning her hands up above her head and turning to pressing desperate kisses to the side of her neck. She mewled sweetly, offering her neck to him with a graceful turn of her head.

“ _Maker_ , Aurum, you had me worried. Leaving like that. Staying away like that.”

He growled into her ear when she made the starting words of an argument, nipping at the very tip of it in chastisement. Aurum moaned, struggling against his grasp.

“C-Cullen!”

“Mmm, I **like** it when you say my name like that. Do carry on.”

Whatever happened that flipped Cullen from stammering Chantry boy to confident man pinning her down to his desk, Aurum decided she liked it. Very much. She could feel his scar pressed to her ear and she writhed, whimpering his name. Cullen hummed against her skin, and let her hands down from where he had them pinned. Aurum immediately reached for him, pulling him closer by his mantle, sealing her mouth across his, and wrapping her legs around his hips.

Cullen bit back a gasp at her apparent desperation for him, which quickly devolved into a deep-throated moan as Aurum lunged up to latch her teeth onto his throat. She bit with just enough force to remind him that she was a wolf betimes, and then licked at her bite to suggest to him that there were, perhaps, better things for one to do with one’s mouth.

She suckled on the side of his neck until there was a purple bruise beneath her lips. He clutched at her and pulled her tighter to him. He kissed her again, hard, brutally biting her lips, pushing her down onto his desk, grinding his hips down onto hers, seeking friction that there was nowhere near enough of.

“Armor, Cullen _armor_. Off with it. Now,” she gasped.

He had never gotten out of his armor so fast in his life. As much as he had been trained to treat his armor with care and respect, right then, all that mattered were the _sounds_ Aurum was making. There was no faster way for him to get undressed, especially when he kept being distracted by Aurum’s own attempt to kick her boots off and pull her tunic over her head. He growled and pulled a knife from his belt, slitting the tunic off of her body. She gasped, but did not stop her attempts to get out of her clothing.

“Aurum, _Aurum_ ,” he chanted as she reached up to push his undershirt off of him, pressing kisses to his chest, fanning her fingers across his hips.

He grunted and dropped his head down to her shoulder when she pinched at one of his nipples, grinding his hips into hers, hesitantly plucking at her breast band, searching for permission to continue. Aurum arched into his hand, tilting her head away from his to give him better access to her neck, whispering a breathy “yes” beneath her breath. Cullen needed little more urging than that, kissing and licking and nibbling at her neck as he pulled her breast band down.

He stared down at her, topless and spread out on his desk and paused. This was the Inquisitor, on his desk, her chest flushed, and lips plumped from his torrid kisses. Nothing could be more arousing than this, Cullen was quick to decide. He wanted to burn this sight onto the backs of his eyelids so he could see this very moment every time he closed his eyes.

 _Maker, let this not be a fever-dream_ , he prayed quickly as his hands hesitantly slid up her torso, edging ever closer to her breasts.

Aurum smirked up at him, arching her back invitingly.

“Like what you see, Cullen?”

He growled, and cupped both her breasts in his hands. He ran his thumbs across her pebbled nipples, gasping with her. When he bent his head to press a kiss to her collarbone, she keened, thrashing up against him with a Dalish curse.

“What’s this, Aurum?”

“Mmmmngh, fuck, _Cullen,_ ” she moaned as his mouth danced across her clavicle.

He bit down on her collarbone and reached up to tug on her ear. Aurum gasped her pleasure, thrashing madly beneath him. Cullen repeated the movements until she was a writhing, moaning mess beneath him. When one of his hands dared to slip down her smalls and brush against her sopping sex, Aurum choked on his name, reaching to pull his face back to hers. He complied greedily, drinking down every sweet sound she made, even if it meant he couldn’t watch how she fell to pieces beneath him. His fingers gently stroked her, insistently pulling more sounds out of the _Inquisitor_.

On his _desk_.

He wanted to hear more, hear her make more sounds for him, because of him, more everything from her. It was not enough to just make her moan his name. He bruised her skin with his teeth and lips, struck by the urge to make sure that this was real by marking her flesh. Aurum did not seem to mind in the slightest, offering her neck to him willingly, rubbing herself against his hand, whimpering his name in between her gasping breaths. He doubted he had ever heard something as sweet as that before in his life.

When he hesitantly slipped a finger inside of her, he was instantly rewarded with her hands on his shoulders, her fingernails digging into his skin and a gasped “ _Creators_ ” spilling out of her mouth. That was truly all the approval he needed, and then he went right to trying to get more of the same sounds to come forth.

Cullen couldn’t help the way he looked down to watch his hand pump his fingers in and out of her. It was entrancing, watching the muscles of her hips jump in time with his movements.

Her eyes were screwed shut when he looked up at her, and her mouth was hanging open and slack. A second finger joined the first inside of her and she sobbed, arching up into him, chanting “please” under her breath. She was begging, alternating between the common tongue and dalish, chanting his name with more devotion than he had heard some of the devout sing the Chant of Light. He kissed her again, softly, sweetly, even as his sword-roughened fingers curled inside of her. She responded by wrapping her arms around the back of his neck and urging him closer to her.

Her magic curled through the air, sparking ineffectively as she tried to force herself into coherence. Cullen thought, idly, that he should be concerned with this development. Mages should never lose control of their magic (but then again, it was entirely because of what he was doing to her and he would be lying if he did not say that that stroked his ego the slightest bit).

“C-Cullen, _please_!” she gasped against his lips as his fingers continued their slow, tortuous assault on her.

Her hands slid down her body to fumble at the laces on her breeches, loosening them, giving his hand more room to move, and he took a definite advantage of that. Aurum moaned his name again, grabbing onto his wrist and grinding her hips against his hand. He stared down at her in awe, hypnotized by her frantic movements. He could feel her dripping wet for him, and he would be lying again if he did not admit that he thought that was the most erotic thing he had seen in recent memory.

“Please?” he parroted back to her, brushing his thumb across her clit.

Her response was a broken sob, a desperate plea, and when he chuckled at her desperation, Aurum’s sweet moans turned to an angry snarl. She twisted pulling him to the side violently, and pinned him to the desk. She kicked her leggings off, and before Cullen could snark at her she had a hand down _his_ pants, wrapping her hand around his achingly hard cock and stroking. Cullen’s half-bitten-back curse devolved into true exultation when she manhandled his cock up and sank down onto it, taking him deep into her all at once.

“Andraste’s flaming tits, Aurum!” Cullen cursed, his hips snapping up against hers. Aurum threw her head back, moaning lowly as they found their tempo.

He grabbed her by her hips, and thrust up into her with wild abandon.

“Maker, _Aurum_ ,” he hissed as she clenched around him.

Her eyes rolled and she dug her fingers into his stomach. She rode him on top of his desk, grinding down onto him, matching his every thrust with a downward motion of her own hips. It was hard to muster any coherent words. Pleasure blistered their blood, and they were solely consumed with just _feeling_ the other that it was hard for either of them to focus on anything else.

Cullen groaned when she leaned down to kiss him, her tongue sliding into his mouth and twisting around his own. He clutched her tight to his chest, delighting in how her breasts felt against his bare chest, and in how – _Maker_ – how her cunt wrapped around him. It was slick and hot around him, clenching in time with her pleasure. He desperately did not want to be crass about the situation, but it was hard not to be when Aurum was moaning –

“Cullen, _Creators_ yes, yes, Gods yes. Fuck me harder Cullen, come _on_. Harder, faster, more, please more, I want more, I need – I _need!_ ”

She bit him again, marking his flesh as he had done to hers. She clawed down his side and mewled when he thrust up particularly hard into her. Her words stuck in her throat, getting caught midway up and only coming out as breathless gasps. One of his hands ventured downwards to cup her ass, his fingers sinking deep into the fleshy meat there. He grunted his approval of her words only after they devolved into a frantic chant of his name, the words “fuck” and “ _more_ ” and all heavily interspersed with deep-throated moans.

He turned his head so he could press his mouth against her ear, and Aurum froze, going completely still for just a moment before she was screaming her pleasure into his shoulder, her orgasm bursting through her until her blood felt like it was as bright as stars. She tried to muffle her pleasure by sinking her teeth into his shoulder and biting down. Cullen would have none of that, however. He wanted to hear her scream all the louder.

As she had done before, he flipped the two of them, pressing her back against the hard wood of his desk, pulling her hips to the very edge of the desk, and after a brief moment of fumbling to strip his (completely soaked-through) breeches from his body, he pulled one of Aurum’s legs up over his shoulder and started pounding into her anew. Aurum howled, her back arching, and breasts bouncing with every thrust he made. The sight was damn near hypnotic, and he was loath to look away from her.

He could feel his own release coiling low in his belly and he prayed to the Maker for just a few moments longer because this was everything he would have ever hoped it could be.

“A- _Aurum_!” he moaned as he felt her tighten around him again, milking his orgasm out of him.

He came hard enough for his world to narrow into white spots, shuddering as he was wracked with pleasure. Aurum was still beneath him, shivering in her own delicious aftershocks. He kissed her neck, her ear, her cheek, her brow, her new scars, and then her lips, before moving to the other side of her neck to repeat the process anew. She huffed at him, but allowed the affection, rising up on one elbow to kiss him back, cradling his face in one hand.

“Well that was quite the welcome home,” she whispered against his mouth, her lips twisting into a smile.

Cullen held her tight, carefully easing her leg down off of his shoulder so as not to strain her overmuch. They were slow to move apart from each other. It was not until Cullen spotted his own cum sliding down her leg that he was struck with a brief bolt of panic.

“Maker, Aurum, I didn’t think-”

“I’ve been taking birthbane since I flowered, Cullen. Precautions against a cruel world for a young elvhen woman, you know. Don’t worry, I won’t bear you any inopportune bastards,” Aurum said with a nonchalance she did not quite feel, waving his concerns away.

His eyes dropped to her flat, muscled stomach, his mind's eye unhelpfully adding the weight of pregnancy to her thin frame, broadening her stomach into fertile roundness and swelling her breasts with milk. She would be gorgeous in motherhood, he knew, because this was Aurum and she was always beautiful. But the merest thought of having her pregnant – with _his_ children made an entirely different feeling bubble up in his stomach. A sharp pang of _need_ hit him hard in the chest and he was careful to keep his hands to himself in that moment.

_Bastards, no. No bastards. Never a bastard child. But perhaps children, nonetheless._

Cullen said nothing, but his gaze did not go unnoticed by Aurum, who gave him a wicked smile and pressed herself back up against him. He trembled, and held her close to him, burying his face in the broad mane of hair at the top of her head. Aurum held him tightly, sighing happily.

“I suppose,” she started as she drew away and started looking around for what remained of her clothing. “That I should get going.”

She was halfway back into her breeches, and fumbling with her ruined tunic to see if she could salvage something wearable out of it. Cullen grumbled something under his breath that she could not catch, and when she turned to question him about it, her world tipped dangerously around her and she found herself hanging over Cullen’s shoulder, his hand on her ass, and her head mere inches from his own. Aurum made a very undignified squeaking sound, but Cullen was already striding purposefully towards the ladder that lead up to his private quarters.

“Cullen, the fuck are you doing?”

His response was a quick smack on her ass, before he started to climb, somehow managing to balance Aurum on his shoulder and still climb up to his room. The mended roof kept the draft out and it was pleasantly warm. Cullen threw her onto his bed, anticipated her struggle to get up, and pinned her down with a searing kiss, pouring all the emotions that were not yet proper to let out into the kiss. Aurum resisted for the briefest of moments before relenting, relaxing into the kiss and returning the affection.

“No woman I’m with is making the long walk back to her rooms after I fucked her on my desk,” he growled at her, nudging her nose with his.

“Ah, so this is common then? I see, good serah.”

Her ears flicked in the way that he came to realize meant she was joking, and he smiled at her.

“Common, no. Well, unless you would like being bent over my desk again, Aurum. I could certainly be obliging.”

She blushed for the barest second, and then leaned up to kiss him again. Carefully, she reached up to cradle the back of his head and pull him down onto the bed next to her. He went willingly, falling into bed with her with a dry laugh. Aurum kicked his blankets down to the bottom of the bed, kicked her breeches off and then pulled the blankets up to her chin. She mumbled something under her breath about being in his bed properly this time, and Cullen huffed at her, reaching out to pull her close.

“I’m going to have to go fetch my armor and fix my desk before someone comes in and sees the mess we left behind, you know.”

“You’re the one who threw everything onto the ground, vhenan.”

The endearment dripped off her tongue without much conscious thought. It was right. It belonged with him. If Cullen did not recognize the Dalish word, he asked no questions about it. He just pressed another kiss to her head and slid out of bed. Aurum curled up, naked, in Cullen’s bed, and waited for him to come back to her. He came back up the ladder, his armor in arm, and after a few more minutes where he set his armor up on its stand, he slid back into bed with Aurum, reaching out to her, and she went willingly, curling up next to him.

They fell asleep like that, with very little care for what the morning would bring.


	24. The Morning After

The next morning, Aurum woke before Cullen. That was not unusual. She did not sleep too long. Most mages did not. She knew from experience that Dorian was already in the library, quietly reaching for another book. Solas would be starting to arrange his paints for the morning’s work, and Vivienne…appearances were everything. Vivienne would lay in bed, perfectly in repose, until the sun rose and it was appropriate to be awake. Everyone dealt with it in their own ways. The Mage Tower she had ordered built was commonly the first tower to light, and the last one to extinguish.

Mages knew their limitations, and most, after a lifetime of cutting their sleeping hours short to escape the dangers of the Fade, could wake up and feel fine.

The fact that mages happened to also drink cups of stimulants in the morning had nothing to with that. Mages, even outside of circles, had always found a way to keep themselves alert when they needed to be. Mages with Dalish backgrounds tended to be better at it, because they were raised in the great wide open, with access to all the herbs and plants that Circle-mages were often denied, in case they tried to poison the Templars that had been abusing them.

Aurum looked down at Cullen, sleeping in his own bed, all of the blankets pulled onto the side of the bed she had been sleeping on, leaving him exposed to the chill morning air. She certainly appreciated the view. He was muscle and scar, built for wars and battlefields. Idly, she trailed her fingers down a scar that followed the curve of his rib. It was only slightly raised. Well tended to after he got it, then. Not the scar of a battle that raged for hours. A duel, a training mishap – something that could be tended immediately, by a healer, or a surgeon, but still very dangerous to his life.

There were so many other ones. Small ones, large ones, thin ones and ones that raised up out of his skin like ropes. All she could see, she touched, running her fingers over their edges, feeling them. She wanted to touch all of him. There had not been time enough for that in the night, when she had curled herself into his embrace. Not even when he had thrown her up onto his desk and made her scream his name, there had not been time enough for her to really…

Slowly, she slid her fingers up, up, up his body, careful to not put any pressure on his neck, lest he wake up panicked. No, she just wanted to feel the scar on his lip again, to trace her fingers across it. Aurum leaned down to press a chaste kiss to the scar. Its texture against her mouth made her heart clench. She sighed and drew away from him. Aurum swung her legs out of the bed, sitting on the edge of the bed.

She was not going to be able to get back to sleep. She wasn’t sure she wanted to, either. Too much sleep tempted memories, tempted the Fade, tempted everything _in_ the Fade. She was too tempting to begin with. Happiness, contentedness, even the most positive of all emotions, all could be twisted in the mind of a mage who slept too long.

Aurum scrubbed the heels of her palms across her eyes, trying to get herself to wake up enough to not want to curl back into Cullen’s arms. She needed to be awake now. She had slept long enough. The task of finding her smallclothes and dressing herself was the first thing Aurum chose to focus on. Getting dressed should be the priority because she was pretty certain that Cullen was not going to want to expose their relationship so soon.

He had expressed hesitance about others knowing before. He had not wanted to initiate a relationship because of her position. Aurum knew that often meant that he would not want for people to see her skulking back to her rooms in the morning. She could…handle this.

She had been with enough people, in enough situations, to understand the sort of person Cullen was. Even if he did care for her in any sort of capacity, he…did not seem to want many people to know about them. Even if he had shown her affection in full view of all of Skyhold, she did not hold any ideas that he would want any more than what they already had. Humans rarely did.

Aurum shook her head, and bent down to pick up her clothes from where Cullen had put them. Her tunic was torn from hem to collar, sliced in a moment of passion. Aurum looked down at it with a small smile. To be so wanted, so needed that Cullen could not wait to actually take her shirt off properly, and had been of enough presence of mind to not cut her as he did so.

How she was going to manage to get back to her rooms, she was not quite sure. Her tunic was a vest, and that was not exactly something that was easy to wear through the open areas of Skyhold without being seen. That would rather put a damper on keeping the relationship hidden and quiet. If that was what Cullen wanted from their relationship, she would have to respect that, and he had given no indications that he wanted anything that the Inquisition as a whole should know about.

Stolen kisses.

Stolen moments.

It could be enough.

Aurum shook her head and ambled back to bed. She was not going to try and get herself dressed while standing. Not when there was a still-warm bed and a naked man she could ogle for the slightest bit longer. So she sat, and did up the laces on her boots as slowly as she could manage, just to try and linger a little longer. A few more minutes could not hurt what had already been done. She was glad that she had stayed – Cullen began to fuss in his sleep, mumbling, then moaning and reaching for a sword that wasn’t in place at his hip.

The air in her lungs came out in a rush, and she leaned over the top of him, hesitantly, gently brushed her hand down his chest.

“Cullen?” she whispered. “Vhenan?”

The endearment came again, and her heart clenched. She said it and she _meant_ it, and the thought was scary. She hardly knew Cullen, hardly at all. They were…close. Perhaps. But vhenan, she called him, because it was what she felt.

Cullen whimpered again, crying out for the things that plagued him to _leave_ him, to leave him be. He screamed, swinging at the terrors that existed only in the Fade, and sat up with a shout. Aurum waited, holding very still, not wanting to startle him. He needed the time to let the darkness and fear bleed away from him. Cullen, for his sake, tried to catch his breath, reaching up to press a hand to his chest. His heart was beating out of control.

“Ah! Aurum, I-I’m sorry.”

“Bad dream?” she asked softly, reaching up to cup her hand around his jaw.

She rubbed her thumb across his morning stubble, a soothing movement meant in equal parts for him and her. Aurum was assured he was well, awake and calming down, and Cullen, comforted in knowing he was safe from the darkness of his dreams.

“They always are. Without lyrium to numb them, they…they are always worse.”

He looked away from her as he spoke, as if he was ashamed by the admission. Aurum pulled his attention back to her, leaning over him to kiss him. At first, she had only meant for it to be conciliatory, a way to make sure he knew she only wanted him to feel safe, but he reached for her hungrily. Cullen held her flush to him, kissing her so desperately that it stole her breath away. Aurum would never comment on it, not comment on how she understood the need to make sure this was real, but she would always kiss him back.

“I didn’t mean to worry you…” he said when they finally parted.

“You didn’t, Cullen. It is okay, I’m here for you.”

He smiled at her, broadly and openly, the tension of a bad dream bleeding away. Aurum leaned down to him again, just as he leaned up. Gently, their foreheads touched and Aurum’s heart gave another jarring flop in her chest. He couldn’t know what it meant, there was no way for him to understand what she was doing, but that did not stop her from turning her head so that the side of her temple was pressed to his. Cullen could not see, or feel it, but her ear flicked out, briefly. If he had been elvhen, like her, the movement would have made the tips of their ears brush against the others.

If he was elvhen, he would recognize the movement. He would know what he meant to her. He would know that the whispered ‘vhenan’ under her breath was meant with every ounce of magic and might in her chest, and that Aurum had finally allowed herself to dream for something with him. But he didn’t.

“You are.”

She smiled, but did not withdraw from where she was.

“I have never felt anything like this, Aurum.”

Her heart, very acrobatic this morning, jumped clear to the back of her throat and Aurum had to swallow every last word that came to her mouth in the wake of her heart.

 _Ma’arlath, ma emma lath, vhenan’ara, emma lath, ma sa’lath_.

She knew Cullen was waiting for a response, she knew that he had admitted something that scared him, something that he maybe really meant. Really meant it. He did mean it.

“Nor I, Cullen. Never like this.”

If he would dance around the words, so would she. She could not be the first to spill the words from her lips, not when she did not think Cullen wanted a relationship that was visible to the world.

He leaned up to kiss her again, a gentle kiss, with no real need for more passion. It was…Creators, it could break her heart to think of it later on. It could break her heart to think of how easily he kissed her, how unhurried it all was. This was more than she could have ever hoped for, this one kiss made nearly everything in her life worth it all. Because he was kissing her not like she was the last sip of water in the desert, but like she was the most precious thing, and he was merely happy to have her here.

Aurum pulled away first. That was too much. Too much to think about. Quickly, she belted her newly acquired vest around her middle, making sure she crossed the severed ends in such a way that hid the jagged edge from the view. Oh, if she came across Dorian now, she would never hear the end of it.

She moved quickly, leaping down to the office-floor of Cullen’s quarters and throwing open the nearest door. Aurum needed to get to her rooms and re-dressed before anyone saw her. It was still early enough in the morning (oh, Creators she had not said good-bye to Cullen, she would have to apologize for that later) that there were not too many people out to see the Inquisitor’s ungaingly scramble from the Commander’s office back to her own rooms. Wisely, she avoided walking through Solas’s rotunda, because she knew that elf would probably also already be up. All of the paths to her rooms took her into the main hall of Skyhold, which, of course, would take her right past Vivienne.

There was no truly stealthy way to get to her rooms, to avoid people who might notice that she was wearing the same clothing from the previous night, and that her tunic was sporting a brand new navel-to-neck slit. Aurum’s lips twitched. She could do this. It was a short Grand Hall, and she was halfway through it without anyone noticing her. Short enough for her to bull through without –

“Aurum! _There_ you are!”

“Vishante _kaffas_ , Dorian, hello, good morning, excuse me.”

She tried to continue her forward momentum, ignoring her friend for the moment, in favor of rushing ahead, but he grabbed her arm and spun her around. He had his mouth open to say something, but his eyes went wide when he saw the state of her tunic. He looked down at the frayed hem, reached up and inspected the hastily crossed-over fabric at her neck, and then looked back behind her. Aurum held her breath, hoping he wouldn’t understand, hoping it was still too early for his mind to be keen –

But no.

Dorian’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped. A gleeful look quickly came over her friend’s face and he looked back to her as if she had just handed him the keys to the Winter Palace itself.

Before she could consider her actions, she reached up and pinched his lips closed.

“Not a _word_ , Tevinter. Not a word. Not a godsdamned word or I will burn all of your clothes.”

He stamped his foot and moved to push her hand away from his mouth, and Aurum grabbed his arm and dragged him along behind her. He kept trying to speak, and every time, Aurum would tug his arm harder and silence him with a hissed curse. She dragged him all the way back to her rooms, slamming the door behind them both.

“Maker you and _Cullen_?”

“Dorian, don’t even-”

“The _Commander_?! Did you boss him around?”

“Dorian!”

“Does he follow commands in bed?”

“ _Dorian_!”

“Did he call you ‘Herald’ or ‘Your Worship’? Did he worship you on his knees? Did-”

“Dorian Pavus, shut the fucking fuck up!”

He smirked at her, crossing his arms and barely containing his happy little hip-wiggle. His stupidly well-maintained eyebrows waggled at her and she could practically _see_ the next four comments bubbling up in his throat.

“But the _Commander_ , and the _Inquisitor_. Ooh, Varric’s books have _nothing_ as salacious as this. Tell me everything.”

Aurum growled at him and shoved Dorian hard. He laughed and shook his head at her.

“Don’t even think about telling Varric! It’s bad enough that you know, damn it.”

“What ever do you mean? Your amatus-”

“ _Vhenan_ ,” she corrected almost immediately. It was important. It was important, he was -

Dorian stopped completely, his smile vanishing for a moment. There was a heartbeat of a pause, a moment where she considered what she had said, and who, and what he knew and then she was covering her mouth with both hands and begging Dorian to not ask questions, to shut up please shut up because –

“I – your _heart_ , Aurum? Not more than a few months ago you would have just as soon spat in his morning coffee, and now you’re calling him your _heart_? Did you say that to his face? Does he know?”

“Dori-aaaan, please? Don’t. He doesn’t know what it means. Shems don’t usually know a lot of Dalish and I should have never started to teach you the endearments. That was a mistake, letting you see me was a mistake, and where the _fuck_ do you think you’re going?”

Dorian had started moving towards the door. Aurum darted forward to grab him by the elbow and pull him back towards her.

“To get your heart, Aurum. I’d be an awful First and best friend if I didn’t make sure you got the one you want-”

“Nonononononono, he doesn’t…he doesn’t want that. Dorian, please, just wait!”

He had started moving again, and she pulled him back again. Panic colored her voice. She could handle Cullen not wanting the relationship to be made public as long as it remained private. Because if someone else went to Cullen to talk about it, if someone pushed on him like she was certain Dorian would push on him, she was afraid he would break whatever they _had_ off. He was a private person, he made it clear that he did not like the thought of too many people knowing.

She had to respect that. Even if she did not like it, even if it made the long-term ability for their…whatever it was to last fall under suspicion, Aurum wanted to at least try. For Cullen, she could try.

“Why are you so worried about this, Aurum?”

_I have so little left I just did everything I could to avenge the people who raised me I don’t want to lose anyone else I cannot lose anyone else I just want to try and find something I can hold onto and Cullen is beautiful and strong and powerful I just want to try with him I might not be able to hold on forever but forever is such a stupid word when we’re fighting against a magister from time immemorial please just let me_ **_try_ ** _and do this properly I want to try and I can’t try if you intervene._

“I just…I want to wait. I want to make sure this is something we can…we can _do_ before it gets out all over Skyhold, alright? I need to make sure, is all.”

The lie tasted poorly on her tongue. Dorian could tell it for what it was, and stared at her, his eyes narrowed. Aurum swallowed heavily and looked away from him. Lying to her First made her feel odd. Thinking of him solely as her First felt odd, too. He was, though, her First. Her First and her friend and he was concerned for her. But he nodded.

It was a lie.

They both knew it.

But it was not time to question it.

“Fine, I won’t go to the dwarf, or to Cullen. But you’re going to have to talk about it eventually.”

“Yes, gods, eventually, yes,” Aurum agreed too-fast. Her words sounded rushed even to her, but it was needed. Anything to move the conversation on from where they were.

“So, then, where has our lovely Inquisitor been these past few weeks? Your advisors clearly knew more than they would tell me, and even being in a strategic listening position to try and overhear what Leliana’s spies knew, I couldn’t figure it out. What did you get up to?”

She cracked a small smile at that. That, at least, she could talk about. Freely now. She had done the right thing and while she would never truly be at peace with her clan being gone, Aurum had a bright burning ember of pride in her chest for managing to do what was _right_.

But before she could get the first words of a long story out, a knock came at her door.

“Come in!” she called, stepping artfully out of direct eyeline, for her tunic was still ruined and she did not need a mouthy page ruining her hard work at keeping secret what needed to be secret.

“Your Worship, Lady Josephine requests your presence. You have guests who wish to speak with you immediately.”

Aurum was taken aback by that. It was _very_ early in the morning still, and she could not imagine any dignitary, foreign or important or otherwise that would choose to make a meeting so early in the morning. Most of the Orlesian visitors required at least until noon to get all of their clothing, makeup and perfumes on, and the Ferelden associates usually slept until the sun was properly in the sky. Hells, even the mage-visitors often waited until it was more likely that everyone else was awake as well, out of common courtesy.

“Who comes to visit me?”

“Lady Josephine bid me not to tell you. Please, as soon as you are ready, meet her in her office.”

The page did not even wait to hear her response. The door closed, and she and Dorian were left in silence.

“What ever do you think that is about?” Dorian asked, clearly perturbed.

“I don’t know…I guess I will clean myself up and go down and see.”

“Quite right of you not to greet your guests with your paramour’s scent still clinging to you.”

Aurum chuckled and shooed Dorian out of her room with as much good grace and friendliness as she could manage. There was only so much she could do to prepare, but she did want a few moments to herself. Whoever it was that had come did deserve to see the Inquisitor at her best, not the Inquisitor covered in love-bruises and smelling, still, of desperate sex and sweat and salt.

Quickly, she washed herself, running a moistened towel across her body, washing off what remained of Cullen’s scent on her skin. Foregoing looking at herself in the replacement mirror Josephine or Leliana had certainly seen to her receiving, Aurum dressed herself. Simply, as she preferred to do, choosing muted earthen tones out of all of the vast wardrobe she now possessed, again, thanks to the efforts of two of her advisors. If she remembered Josephine’s courtesy-lessons properly, it would be unbecoming of her to appear to ostentatious this early. Whoever was calling upon her was doing so at an unusual hour.

She began her descent down to Josephine’s office while still fixing her hair, holding a thin leather strap in her teeth as she hastily braided her hair out of her eyes. Since the dragon’s fire had taken a good amount of length off her hair, it did not take as long as it usually did, and she was tying it in place by the time she was down the stairs from her room.

Aurum brushed the few strands of hair that had fallen onto her shoulders as she fixed her hair away, straightened her tunic, adjusted her belt, checked that nothing else was egregiously out of place, all before reaching a hand up to knock on the door to Josephine’s office. It was only polite that she announce herself before entering.

“Aurum, please, come in.”

Josephine’s voice made her pause. The ambassador rarely, if ever, called her only by her first name. Her name was always proceeded by a title, to indicate her importance and set a precedence for the guest to show Aurum the proper respects. Josephine would never just call her “Aurum” so casually unless the person waiting for her _knew_ her well enough to refer to only by name.

She steeled herself against what could be waiting for her, and entered.

“Mythal’enaste, _Liluye_ ,” one of her five guests whispered. The name tickled at the back of her memory, a word she remembered, a laugh, a cry, and blood on snow.

“…Papae?”


	25. The Second Reunion

“Papae?”

“Aurum! Da’len! I have missed you so!”

The man walked forward, his arms open to embrace her, but Aurum took a large step back, away from him. She frowned at him, turning her head away and sucking in a sharp breath from in between her teeth. His exuberance startled her and she did not know what to make of it. He knew her, that much was clear, but Aurum was edging close to panic.

“Aurum?”

“Papae, is it you? Really? ”

“Do you not remember me?”

His voice was small and hesitant, and he reached a lone hand out towards her. She did not take the hand offered, clutching both of her hands behind her back and turning her head away from him. She did not know what to do with her hands, or how to react. This was not what she had been expecting when Josephine called her into the room. This man definitely looked like her father, or at least she was making the assumption that what she remembered of her father would age into. But she was still not certain.

She wanted it to be him.

But she had wanted to be not-alone before and had ended up –

_“Lick, Aurum.”_

_The press of gloved fingers against her lips, the small jerk of his hips against her, the heavy feeling of his cock against her stomach. He was so much larger than she was, he was going to split her on his cock and she **wanted**._

_“Tell me you belong to me. You belong to me. You are mine and mine and mine alone tell me that you are mine. Tell them that you are mine.”_

Aurum bit her lip until she tasted blood, and then shook her head. Not real, that had never been real and it was not relevant to the current proceedings. This one was not a demon. No, after _that_ time, the guards had all been told how to watch for clever demons and they would have known. There were mages in the guard rota, one at every entrance, always on the watch for anything demonic and it would take an incredibly powerful demon to manage what the one who had already penetrated Skyhold’s defenses had.

“Papae…I hardly remember Mamae. On the best days I remember her voice before they saw us. On the worst, all I remember is blood. I…I didn’t even know you were still alive.”

He looked stricken.

“Liluye…?”

“Mamae died the day we left. Templars found us. The Hunters found me the next day. She has a tree near the forest there. I haven’t been back in years. I don’t handle it very well.”

“I…I didn’t know. I thought she was just…I didn’t think. Aurum, dearest, I – I didn’t…I thought she was just keeping you away from me. I went to her father’s clan and did not hear anything from them. I had assumed they had just not wanted me to talk to her anymore. We did not part on good terms, your mother and I, and I had thought…she had just not wanted to speak to me ever.”

Aurum swallowed.

“No. Templars found us. She died trying to protect me. My…magic came early, but not soon enough to save her. Fast enough to kill the Templars, though, and keep me safe through the night.”

Shame burned her. She had lost her mother, and it was entirely her fault. If she had been better, faster, stronger, less childish, she would have saved her mother and her life would have been so much less sorrowful.

“Aurum, da’len. I am so sorry. I didn’t know…I didn’t know, da’len. I would have, I would have tried to find you. I thought she had taken you to her clan, I thought Deshanna had taken the both of you-”

“ _Deshanna_? You knew Deshanna?” Aurum interjected, breaking through her father’s concern.

Her father looked at her, shock written on his face. Josephine, in the background, looked between Aurum and her father, and politely gestured for the young children and pregnant woman to follow her out of the room, allowing Aurum and her father to have some privacy as they got to know each other.

“Yes, of course. She was Liluye’s mother. I had met he-”

“Deshanna was my _grandmother?!_ ”

“How did _you_ know Deshanna?”

“She was my Keeper! I was her First, she trained me, she taught me my magic, she all but adopted me as her child, she raised me.”

“Desh…Deshanna found you? You were still raised with her Clan?”

“Yes! I didn’t know. Deshanna must have known. She loved me, I know she did. She showed me everything she knew and protected me. She loved me, and I never knew. I didn’t – do you think she didn’t tell me for a reason? She knew I was Mama-Liluye’s daughter. She knew who I was.”

Her father gave a broken laugh and reached forward, slower this time, to embrace his daughter. Aurum let him hold her, wrapping her arms around his waist and letting him hold her close. He sighed, and squeezed her tight to him. Aurum was still uncomfortable with this affection, but she allowed it. This was her Papae. She had family still. The thought did not soothe her as much as it could have. Too many questions bubbled up in her mind for her to be comfortable.

“Why…why did you wait so long?”

“I couldn’t hope to think that it was you. I did not know where you had gone, where your mother had taken you and I could not bear the thought of it being _you_. The mage leading the Inquisition. The Dalish Mage from my wife’s clan. I could not hope that it was you, da’len.”

That answer did not satisfy Aurum.

“You did not seek to confirm it though. You did not come, not until now. Why?”

“I was invited by the Ambassador Josephine. She sent word to me, how she found me, I don’t know, but she did. She sent word and I came. I brought…I brought my wife, and my daughters to meet you as well. I wanted you to see your family. All of us.”

Aurum’s breath left her in a shaky rush. Family. She had family. She wasn’t really an orphan. Not really. She had had Deshanna and never known it, and now she had met her Papae again, but he brought with him a human lover and their children. Her half-sisters. The implication smacked her square in the jaw.

Her _sisters_.

“I have sisters?”

“Yes. Three of them, and a fourth sibling on the way,” he said proudly, turning to the door that Josephine had led them out from.

“Who is she?”

Her voice was soft, gentler than she could remember it being in months. The Inquisition had taken much from her, and Aurum had been fighting for so long that she had nearly forgotten what it was like to speak without the press of power behind her tongue. She could – no, she _would_ be herself for her family.

The self she hid from the Inquisition, the self that had been dragged over glass on the way to power. That self, the one she ached for, the one she just recently started embracing again, the one that sang beneath her skin, _that_ one, that was the one that deserved to meet her family. Not the Aurum that had been running, fighting, commanding, running and destroying anything that stood in her path, not the Hunter, not the Spy, but the First. The Keeper. She had to put away the blades and fangs for them. They were family. Blood.

 _Blood_.

Aurum shook her head and looked back to her father.

“She’s…she’s from the town I moved too after your mother left. I met her soon after and my heart was broken. She made it…easier.”

Aurum hummed her response, purposefully making the decision to hold her ears still. It was a tough trick to master, for Qunari and Elvhen alike, but much like Bull, Aurum had received a myriad of training lessons in how to do it. There would be no use in distressing her father by letting him see how his words were affecting her. She fell easily into the coolly disaffected guise of a true Keeper. Her emotions fell away, and left her standing, raw and whole at the same time.

“She must be special, then.”

“She made the loneliness fade. But she knows…. You have your mother’s eyes, you know. I had always thought your eyes would have stayed…it doesn’t matter.”

Aurum’s brows furrowed for the barest moment. Her confusion was quickly disregarded, consumed by the steely calm of a Keeper. If she was going to style herself the Keeper of the Inquisition after all of what she went through in Wycome to see the Clan Lavellan put to true rest, she had to truly embrace it. And that started now.

“It does, if it brings you peace, Papae. I don’t remember much anything from before Mamae died. I have her eyes?”

“Yes, you do. The exact same eyes as your mother, after all this time. Liluye - she would call them her hawk’s eyes whenever I made notice of the color. It was a joke, just never one she explained to me. But yes. Your mother’s hawk’s eyes.”

Aurum nearly caught herself asking what clan Mamae had belonged to. Liluye was her mother. Liluye Lavellan, daughter to Deshanna.

“What was…What was Mamae’s _name_?” she asked hesitantly, unsure if her father would know the answer to the question she was asking.

“What is yours, daughter mine?”

It was a fair question, and one that demanded a proper response. Aurum took a moment to make sure she had found all the appropriate words in Dalish, and, with her shoulders rolled back and her gaze centered firmly upon her father, she spoke.

“My parents named me Aurum. That is the name I wear for the people. Amongst the People I am proud to be known as Elarsulahaja Tarasyl’an Te’las, trained of Istimaethoriel Lavellan.”

Her father beamed at her, bowing his head politely.

“Well met, da’len. You have found a strong name for yourself, Fade-singer. I am so proud of you. Your mother was Assalani Lavellan, daughter and trained of Istimaethoriel.”

Aurum beamed, pleased – so _very_ pleased that she had been acknowledged properly. She had no small hope that she would ever be able to say that without flinching, and not only did she manage it, but her father had done everything right in making her feel as if she could truly wear that name. All of the scorn of the other clans (she was certain it would come as the clan-name was made known) she could handle, now. What remained of her bloodline accepted her, and her title. That was good. It was the first time she had dared to speak it aloud, the first time she had let the truth of her name come from her mouth and it felt _good_.

They talked a while longer, of inconsequentialities, of years they had missed, of her nameday and when it _actually_ was, of what she had done with her life, and about his new wife and children. He asked about what it was like to be the Inquisitor, what it was like to be Aurum, how she was doing, and then how she was _really_ doing. She hemmed and hawed around that last particular question, not certain how to answer truthfully without worrying that she would unduly worry her father.

Besides, how was she ever going to begin to explain how she felt right then? She had someone she called ‘Vhenan’ on instinct, and he could not possibly know what he meant to her, and she couldn’t tell him because he would not – did not – want to be seen with her in front of their clan, so she was not truly involved with him, but she still wanted him with more ferocity than she could recall wanting something before, and she did not know how to even start putting that in words she could bear to say.

And then, yes, there was political intrigue and danger and armies being raised against her and the nagging feeling that something even worse was coming on the horizon and there was nothing she could do about it. All of this boiled up inside of her, threatening to spill off the tip of her tongue. He was her father, he should know these things that now threatened his daughter who had been lost for so long/

So she bit her tongue instead and smiled nervously at her Papae who blessedly kept quiet. He, of course, had noticed, but he said nothing. He just smiled wryly at her and put a companionable hand on her shoulder.

“Do you want to meet your sisters, and my wife?”

Aurum nodded, her smile tight. She was nervous. Of course she was. She was meeting her family, what remained of it, for the first time. It would be odd if she wasn’t nervous.


	26. The Stars

“Aurum, Papa said you could show me stars!”

Aurum blinked down at her youngest sister, Sarah. Confusion touched her expression as she tried to figure out what the four-year old meant. The little one had clambered into her lap almost immediately after Aurum had sat at the table for breakfast. It had only been a day since they had first come to Skyhold, and while Aurum put everything on hold to make sure they were comfortable, it seemed the youngest was comfortable enough to use her as a personal playing ground now. Aurum allowed the movement, because of course she did. She was careful to keep from dropping food on the very squirmy child as she ate her breakfast.

“The stars come out every night, da’len.”

“Papa said you had magic! Could we see the stars now? I like the stars!”

“After breakfast, da’len, I will show you all the stars I remember, and tell you the stories I was told when I was your age about their names. I promise. But breakfast first. Da’len don’t grow up big and strong unless they have good breakfasts.”

Of course, the little child went back to eating with gusto. Just…Aurum’s food, not Sarah’s. Aurum sighed, but smiled down at Sarah, letting her eat whatever it was that the little girl wanted to eat off her plate. Granted, breakfast was one of Aurum’s favorite meals and she had only just managed to get some of the spiced candied peaches she loved so much to be shipped to Skyhold, and Josephine had labeled them “For Inquisitor Only” but really, it was okay that Sarah was picking every candied peach off her bowl of oatmeal, sucking the honey and spice off of them and then putting them _back_ into the oatmeal.

Dorian, sitting next to her, cooed at the small child, encouraging the very inappropriate food handling, and elbowing Aurum in the ribs when she mouthed a few choice swear words at him.

“Not in front of your little _sister_ , Aurum!”

Aurum growled, her ears pinning back against her head.

“You are _such_ a bad person, Pavus. You realize, as my First, she’s _your_ sister too, yes?”

He blanched, the color draining from his face.

“W-what?”

“Sarah, this is Dorian Pavus of Minrathous. He is my brother, and therefore, yours too. Say hello to your brother!”

“Hi brother! My name is Sarah, it is good to meet you!” Sarah chirruped happily, climbing out of Aurum’s lap and into Dorian’s, smearing oatmeal everywhere.

Dorian made a small, _small_ , sound of objection as Sarah reached for his moustache with an oatmeal-covered hand. She pushed her small, still-chubby fingers against Dorian’s face and cheeks, squishing his expression into something that she found amusing.

“Dorian hasn’t eaten his breakfast, Sarah. Do your sisters ever help you eat when you don’t want to?”

“Yeah! Sometimes, they do.”

“Do you want to show Dorian how that goes? I’m sure he’s _very_ interested.”

Aurum handed the bowl of her spit-slicked peach oatmeal to Sarah, who held it in her grimy hands and settled herself in Dorian’s lap, not caring that she was dripping oatmeal all over Dorian’s very nice, very finely tailored clothes (some of the few things he had brought from Tevinter with him), to Dorian’s murmured disapproval.

“That’s not necessary! Not in the slightest!” he protested when Sarah lifted her spoon to his mouth, a piece of once-candied peach balanced precariously atop the oatmeal. He jerked his head away, staring at Aurum.

Sarah’s lower lip wobbled and her big brown eyes welled with tears. Dorian turned to Aurum for help, only to see Aurum mimicking her younger sister near perfectly. The family resemblance was uncanny.

Dorian sighed, adjusted the few parts of his tunic that were not already spotted with oatmeal, leaned forward and opened his mouth. It would be the messiest breakfast he had ever eaten since he was Sarah’s age, but the little girl giggled and laughed at the prospect of feeding Dorian oatmeal, and Aurum sneakily took the opportunity to steal bits of Dorian’s more decadent breakfast. He frowned at her from around his spoon-fed mouthful of oatmeal, but could not stop her from stealing his bacon, or fresh fruits, or sips of his morning cup of wine.

He fumed, Aurum laughed, and breakfast went along just wonderfully after that. 

* * *

“Where are we going, Auru?”

“It’s where we work, Sarah. My advisors call it the War Room, but I would like you to learn the name for it in Elvish. It is Harillenan, the Place of Opposition. It is where I make decisions about what my Clan and I must do.”

Aurum and Sarah were walking hand in hand, carefully picking their way back down from Aurum’s quarters. Sarah had needed to be cleaned up after breakfast, and Dorian had trudged away to go find another outfit to wear for the day.

“Hari…Harillenan?”

“Hah-rill-ehn-ahn, very good,” Aurum said, nodding down at the little girl who beamed up at her. “Do you remember what it means?”

“Place of Oppo…sition!”

“ _Very_ good, da’len. Come on, we’re almost there.”

Aurum and Sarah waved to Josephine as they passed by, and Josephine did her best to hide the gleeful smile on her face to see the Inquisitor coddling a young child like she was. Aurum was smiling, and hadn’t stopped since her family had been introduced to her. Josephine was undeniably proud of what she and Cole had done for Aurum. She had needed this, and now that she had it, it was hard to imagine Aurum returning to the dour war-worn person she had been before.

* * *

“Josie, have you seen Aurum this morning? I had hoped to see her to discuss some of our work in the Western Approach with her, and I can’t seem to find her.”

Josephine looked up at Cullen, and the smile on the Ambassador’s face made him almost certain that she had been up to something dastardly. For a moment, he panicked and thought there was going to be another dance he had to attend. Even with the claim he had made to Aurum about keeping her close in case of other parties, the thought still terrified him. He did _not_ dance. Except with her. On a balcony. Right, just that once.

“She’s in the War Room right now. The door should be open, just go in.”

Cullen nodded, trying not to sigh in relief. No dancing. Just Aurum. If Josephine noticed how his smile came with a blush high on his cheeks, she certainly wasn’t going to immediately send a messenger to Leliana about it to ask for more details from the Spymaster. Certainly not, not at all. Especially not, because she could see the imprint of someone’s mouth poorly hidden by the fur of his ever-present mantle and she needed to know if it was indeed the Inquisitor’s mouth that kept leaving all those marks on their tight-wound Commander.

Cullen did not rush to the War Room. He took his time, adjusting his armor self-consciously, trying to make sure his furs were in place to mask the deep purple mark on the side of his neck, trying to look appropriate for his impromptu meeting with Aurum.

He entered the War Room on catspaws, wanting to surprise her, to do something sweet for the hard-working Inquisitor, but was shocked into stillness by the scene greeting him.

Aurum was sitting on the War Table, her back to the door. A small child was in her lap, reaching up towards the little mage-lights that hovered over their head. It took him a moment to recognize that each of the little baubles of light that hovered were actually taking the positions of stars, mimicking all of the skies of Thedas. Aurum was speaking softly, curled down to make sure that the child could hear her.

“The dragon! I want to see the dragon!”

“Draconis, the dragon alone, who flies over the Hinterlands, one of the Gods who Tevinter forgot. He flies, always, unable to land,” Aurum intoned softly, pointing up at the lights she held in the sky entirely by her own memory and power.

Cullen watched, just as entranced as the small child was as some of the lights shifted out of the sky, and the constellation Draconis flew down out of the sky to circle the two of them, dipping his wings and screaming without sound. Aurum let the little girl’s fingers trail through the lights, splintering the dragon for a moment before it came back together into a single form once again. It circled a few more times, and then rejoined the stars.

“Auru, Papa says that there are no dragons anymore.”

“Papae is not correct. I have seen and fought dragons before. The Old Gods of Tevinter were dragons, and still slumber. But that is a story for another time, da’len. For now, I think we should be done. Go talk to Papae and your sisters. I have to reset the table here before I come find you and your sisters again.”

“Okay, Auru!”

The little girl scrambled out of Aurum’s lap, turned and pressed a quick kiss to Aurum’s cheek before darting off the table and skipping past Cullen. Cullen smiled after the small girl, sighing wistfully. The little one looked like they could easily have been Aurum’s child, with the rounded ears of her human parent. Cullen had to swallow the sudden knot in his throat at the idea.

Aurum rolled her shoulders and dismissed the stars she had dancing in the air above her. Slowly, she uncurled her legs and scooted forward so she could get off the table. Equally as slowly, Cullen advanced, privately happy that she had not heard him yet and still had her back to him. He could sneak up on her.

He closed the space between the two of them quickly as she turned towards him, wrapping his arms around her waist and pressing a kiss against her lips. Aurum froze, stiffening in his grasp. To his shock, she did not relax into him and return the affection after she recognized it was him. No, instead Aurum made a panicked sound and fought to get away from him. Her magic sparked around her and she shoved him away from her with a barrier spell. He stumbled backwards, tripping over his own feet in his haste to get away from her.

“A-Aurum?”

She snapped her attention to him, tense and ready to fight. She exhaled sharply and dismissed the barrier, throwing it away from her quickly. Almost as if she were trying to hide her magic from Cullen, she clasped both of her hands behind her back and looked away from him, shrinking back towards the corner Leliana usually stood in.

“ _Creators_ , Cullen I am so sorry. I just…I thought you were the demon again and I didn’t, I mean, I just-”

“Aurum, what demon? Are you alright?”

Aurum wanted to bite down on the words, but she couldn’t. Not this time. Not when her heart was pounding in her ears and her stomach was churning.

“When the desire demon…when it had come to my room, I had stalled it. It kept trying to tempt me with things I didn’t want. I could resist everything it showed me. It showed Halamshiral returned to the Dalish, the resurgence of the Elvhen dynasties, all of these things that I had always wanted in my youth and I could tell that they were _wrong_ and I could _resist_ and _endure_. But then it showed me _you._ You had me pinned down to the War Table and you were telling me to declare…to say that I belonged to you. You were…I mean, you had…Cullen, it – I – I couldn’t say no. I wanted to say yes. I was going to…”

He stared at her, his mouth hanging slack. Her skin was pale and he could see the beginnings of her magic still hovering in the air around her, ready to defend her if he was revealed to be the thing that she feared. He understood.

“Aurum…I didn’t know.”

“I didn’t _want_ you to! Dorian told me to go talk to you about it after it happened, but you were-”

“I had a bad…day, right?” Cullen offered gently.

“Yes. My job was to take care of you. I thought I was okay. And it never came up. There were only a few times it bothered me, but I handled it. I just – it’s just _hard_ when you startle me like that.”

Part of her knew that she was not in the grasp of the demon, because this did not feel like a demon, but she had been coming into contact with so many impossibilities that even her training could not truly comfort her and assure her that she was not going to shake her head and find the demon still stroking her cheeks.

Cullen reached for her hesitantly, not wanting to spook her again. She rushed forward, curling into his embrace, burying her face in the fur of his pauldrons. Aurum trembled against him, shivering as she tried to comprehend everything that had happened.

“Do you want to talk about it now?” Cullen asked gently, absentmindedly stroking her hair.

She shook her head ‘no’ first, emphatically, still trying to get closer to him. After a moment, a pause, that ‘no’ turned into a vigorous ‘yes’.

“What happened?”

Aurum made a small sound under her breath, trying to decide where she should start. She didn’t want to talk about this, but it was a good idea. She needed to. Sometimes the War Table was still hard for her to look at. That needed to stop. She had to tell him.

“I…you had pinned me to the War Table, like that first time, but…different. Right where I usually stood, and you were, you had, my hands were pinned up over my head and you were fin…fingering me with your gloves still on, and you weren’t letting me cum, and then you were making me lick your fingers and telling me that you wanted me. You, I was…dripping over the Frostbacks, you said, and you told me to tell you that I was yours, that you could take me on the Table like that, and I…I – and I…”

Cullen held her tight to him, shushing her gently when she whimpered. He had no magic, he had no way to help someone through their night-terrors when his still haunted him, but he wanted to make it better. Aurum was more than just the Inquisitor, she was _Aurum_ and she deserved better than a demon-bred fear.

“What can I do to help you, Aurum?”

She huffed, burying her face into the crook of his neck.

“Dorian suggested you and I just fuck it out. He used different words, but the sentiment was the same.”

Cullen muttered a short curse beneath his breath and picked Aurum up. She gasped, and wrapped her legs around his waist. Her fear was gone, replaced with breathless anticipation. She had meant it as a jest, in her mind, but the words had come out breathless and tinted with need and Cullen was eagerly reacting to the statement, seeking a way – _any_ way to assure Aurum that this was real and he was not a demon here to harm her.

“Is that what you want?” he growled at her, his breath hot in her ear.

Aurum shuddered, twining her hands in his hair and pulling herself up so they were nose-to-nose. Cullen’s strength astounded her. He held her up with one arm, his hand cupping her ass, while his other arm made certain that she stayed pressed against him.

Her fear vanished, consumed by desire and need, and she whined playfully as Cullen carefully stepped around the War Table, not setting her down immediately.

“Do you want something new, or do you want to rewrite the old?” he asked gruffly, kissing Aurum soundly to give her time to think of a response.

Her response was a soft sigh and a desperate kiss. She locked her ankles together behind his back and used the little amount of leverage she could muster to rise up higher and kiss him harder. At first it was because she was unsure what she wanted, and she did not know how to phrase what she really wanted. There were so many things she wanted that trying to isolate what she wanted from _him_ was difficult.

“Make it different for me, Cullen. Please,” she whispered. “I don’t want to think about it, I don’t want to think it’s you, I want to know how it would feel for real.”

Cullen groaned and was thankful that the War Table had already been cleared of markers by Aurum and her little sister, because he took so much fucking pleasure in throwing her down, right where she usually stood. He had to try and match what the demon did enough for her to find relief in doing it differently.

Aurum gasped, arching her back up, seeking out his touch. There was a whimper hidden behind her exhalation, and when he took a moment to look up at her, he saw her eyes screwed shut, the muscles in her neck corded tight. Cullen knew that was not a good sign, and stopped the roving of his hands. He had some experience in these sorts of things…well, he had listened to stories from other people who had more experience than him and he understood the basics of checking in on someone who might be getting in over their head.

“Aurum, do you need a watchword? In case…”

“Halani. My word is Halani. It means ‘help’ in Dalish.”

“Halani. Say it once again, for me, please. I want to make sure you remember-”

“I’m _Dalish_ , Cullen. I’m not going to forget my own fucking language,” Aurum snapped waspishly, gritting her teeth against further curses. Cullen did not move. She sighed. “Halani. Please, continue.”

He nodded, and carefully caught both of her wrists in one of his hands, then pushed them up over her head, stretching her out beneath him. Aurum sucked in a breath through clenched teeth and tested his grip on her wrists. It was not an earnest movement to escape, so Cullen held strong. They had just established her watchword and she did not seem to be in genuine discomfort, so he continued.

Slowly, he traced the lines of her body with his unoccupied hands, never lingering overlong in any one place, letting both of them settle down, assuring them both that there was nothing truly wrong in this moment. He waited, very patiently, until the tension bled out of Aurum, and she relaxed down onto the War Table. Cullen leaned down to kiss her, ghosting the barest pressure of his lips against hers before letting free hand work on undoing the laces of her breeches. She trembled beneath him, shivering in a way that he could not decipher as wholly good or wholly bad. Her eyes were closed and her jaw was clenched tight. He kept his eyes on her as he slowly, painfully slowly slipped his gloved hand into her smalls, his fingers seeking that delightful little pearl that did nothing but bring her pleasure.

Aurum bit her lip and thrashed, throwing her head back and groaning lowly.

“ _There’s_ my Aurum,” he purred down at her. “My _Aurum_ , stretched out and whimpering for me. _My_ Aurum, _mine_.”

She keened his name when he pushed a gloved finger into her, her hips bucking up off the Table. Cullen growled down at her, and **pushed** his hand down, forcing her to stay still and beneath him. Her voice stuck in the back of her throat, and she rocked her hips fruitlessly against his hand.

“Do you want more?”

He stilled his movements, watching her carefully. Aurum’s eyes were still screwed shut and her lips were pulled back in a grimace. She was focusing too hard still, too intent on what had been to enjoy what _was_. Cullen withdrew his lone finger, flicked her clit hard enough to make her squirm, and then, without any preamble, pressed two of his fingers into her, his thumb dancing sin and pleasure on her skin.

“Aurum, you’re going to have to tell me what you want, dear.”

Cullen leaned forward over her, turning her head to the side and near-savagely biting her ear. He did not let go, either. He would increase the pressure as his fingers pressed _in_ , and release it as he slid them _out_. Aurum sobbed, pulling on his grip on her wrists, trying to find purchase where there was none. She babbled for mercy, slipping backwards into Dalish, begging in languages Cullen did not speak for relief, but he gave her none. No, he continued the sensual pressure, never giving enough for her to hurtle into the oblivion of pleasure.

Aurum’s words failed her and all she could manage were plaintive whimpers, arching herself up against his armor for long minutes. It took her a while to find her words, and longer to remember how she should put them together.

“Make it different. Make it you. Please, Cullen, please. I want it to be diff- _rent_.”

Her voice broke halfway through, but it was enough to get Cullen to relent his assault on her senses. He withdrew just the slightest bit to smirk down at her. He made certain her eyes were open when he brought his hand to _his_ lips and started sucking the fingers that had just been inside her. Cullen made his own small sounds of pleasure when he tasted her juices there. He licked and sucked at his own gloved fingers, his hips rocking forward against hers. Aurum watched, her mouth hanging open and eyes utterly transfixed upon the scene presented to her. Cullen, once satisfied that he had managed to suck every last drop of her taste from his glove, pulled it off his hand with the assistance of his teeth, throwing it somewhere over his shoulder.

“Ask me again, Aurum,” he whispered, leaning down over her, and staring down at her intently.

“Make it different, please, Cullen.”

“Again,” he said with a shake of his head. That wasn’t what he wanted from her.

“Cullen _please_!” she whined, trying in vain to hook her legs around his hips again. Her breeches were a tangled mess around her ankles and she was well and truly pinned down. She couldn’t force him to do anything. She had to wait for him to decide.

“Ask me, Aurum.”

“Cullen, please, make it different for me. I want you to make it different. Can you please make it different for me?” she panted, pulling her elbows together over her face to hide the blush that had started blooming on her cheeks.

“Hhhhhhhhmm,” he drawled, pushing her tunic high up over her waist, skimming his ungloved hand over her stomach, flitting upwards for barest moments to brush against her still-bound breasts.

Cullen leaned down again and captured her lips in a searing kiss. Both of his hands reached up to grab her wrists, and for a moment, he stretched her out beneath him, letting her feel the powerlessness of her position beneath him. Aurum gasped into his mouth, and he took full advantage of that, pressing his tongue flat against hers, stealing her breath completely away from her, leaving her gasping beneath him when he finally withdrew.

“I suppose I will.”

He released her wrists and helped her sit up on the Table. Cullen pulled her close to him, kissing her neck and ear with hot, open-mouthed affection, and did not relent until she was writhing in his grasp. Only then did he still the insistent press of his mouth to her skin in favor of crowding up against an already breathless Aurum, forcing her to stillness again.

“I’m going to bend you over this table and _fuck_ you, Aurum. I’m going to fuck the brains right out of your silly little pointed ears until you can’t ever remember why I decided to do this to you.”

Cullen expected a reaction, but not the one he got. Aurum withdrew from him just far enough for him to actually watch as her eyes darkened to black ringed in silverite blue. Her mouth hung slack and words failed her entirely. All that she could muster was a breathy “ _Cullen_ ” and it sounded more like a prayer than anything else.

He turned her onto her stomach with perhaps a touch too much force. But Aurum gasped and arched regardless, pleading with him to get on with it, please, please, please.

Armor was not made with the thought of fucking in mind. He fumbled with all the suddenly non-essential parts of his everyday wear as Aurum whined at the sudden lack of stimulation now that she was face down on the War Table, her breeches and smalls around her ankles, and nothing else happening to her. Cullen growled and shoved three fingers back inside of her. Aurum wailed, her cunt clamping down on his fingers. He cursed at fucking _length_ and fumbled with the last few laces and clasps that were holding him back and away from her.

His cock was finally freed and he took a moment to withdraw his hand from Aurum (she writhed and whimpered his name again) and pumped his fist over his cock a couple of times just to edge himself closer to completion. Aurum cursed beneath her breath, hissing something unkind about Cullen being a tease. But her words failed her as soon as she felt the head of his cock press up against her entrance. She babbled endearments at him, pressing her hips back against him, urging him deeper into her, begging for him to fuck her.

They groaned in unison as Cullen slowly thrust into her. He took his time on that initial thrust, savoring every slow moment. Once he was fully seated inside of her, he held her still, his hands on her hips, holding her down and pushing himself up with the same motion. Aurum sobbed as he pulled her back further on his cock, pushing further and further into her, even if it was only a few centimeters more into her, it was enough for Aurum to start whimpering about how big he was, how full she was, how much she needed him to keep fucking her because he was so – _so_ – so good.

He dropped his head forward, resting his forehead between her shoulderblades. Cullen withdrew only slightly so he could thrust back into her by fractional amounts. He gasped, she moaned, long and low, and they quickly fell into a frantic rhythm. The War Table was too sturdy to rock with every thrust, but the sound of her thighs hitting the thick wood was a _very_ audible counterpoint to the breathless moans and whimpers that poured out of both of their mouths. Cullen pounded into her, trying to hold himself up, trying to hold back on the words that wanted to tumble out of his mouth, but failing.

“Aurum, my Aurum,” he chanted under his breath, holding her tighter, thrusting _harder_ , trying to eke out more pleasure from this tryst in the _War Room_ of all places, and not managing to do anything more than gasp her name one last time as Aurum’s hands clenched on the table beneath her and she was wailing his name.

He bit back a curse when he came back to himself and looked down. Aurum was still impaled on his cock, her legs gone out from under her, the table the only thing holding her up. If he looked down, he could see where her clothes had puddled around her ankles, and her tunic pushed only high up enough for him to see the ruddy marks on her hips in the shape of his hands that would deepen into bruises later in the day. Cullen sighed, and slowly withdrew from her.

Aurum pushed herself up off the table slowly, turning and bending to pick up her breeches. Cullen caught sight of the bruises that had already started to form on the front of her thighs as she pulled her breeches back into place and tied the laces back into place. Cullen…readjusted himself and stared at Aurum as she winced and rubbed her legs.

“Maker, I’m sorry, Aurum – I didn’t _mean_ to-”

“Cullen, I did not use the watchword. I liked it. Thank you. It helped. Can you put the markers back for me? I was supposed to go meet with Lizbeth for lunch, and I think I’m late already. ”

She leaned up to press a kiss to his cheek before fixing her hair and walking towards the door to the War Room, her hips swaying and a smile on her lips. Cullen blushed scarlet as he looked down at the right fucking mess they had made of the War Table. Aurum had, indeed, dripped all over the Frostback Mountains and he had no idea how he was ever going to even come close to hiding this from the other advisors.

That was a problem for a few hours from now though. Right now, he had markers to place back and the taste of Aurum on his lips, and a consideration of how he was going to attempt to stand and look at her the next time they were at the War Table without losing his mind.


	27. The Adventure

“Hello, Lizbeth.”

Lizbeth was the middle child. Younger than Aurum by about a decade, Lizbeth was petulant and surly, as most young women her age were. She was picking at the remnants of the lunch they were supposed to share together and her mouth was twisted down into a deep frown. Their lunch was situated on a nice blanket in the gardens, and Lizbeth was curled up on the furthest corner from Aurum, staring off into the distance.

Aurum’s legs were crossed beneath her and looking to her younger sister. She had taken the time to fix her hair, and straighten her clothes, but there was still a lingering blush on her cheeks, and an ache between her legs that she wanted Cullen to fill again. That was a thought for another time, though.

“Hullo.”

Lizbeth’s tone was soft, defeated. Aurum frowned.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t like being here. I don’t like the people and I don’t care about anything here. Everyone here is just…”

Aurum cocked her head off to one side.

“What do you mean, da’len?”

“You’re the fecking _Inquisitor_ , some high and mighty Herald, wearing all the finest clothing and that bullshit, but Da wants us to believe that you’re raised Dalish? That you don’t have _money_? That you’re anything other than what the stories say? How much of what they say is true? How much have you changed? Were you _ever_ what Da says you were? Because it doesn’t fecking look like it.”

Lizbeth threw her hands in the air. Aurum watched, letting her sister ride out her tantrum. It was odd, she mused, that her sister seemed to be echoing some of the very fears that Aurum had been fostering since her long walk back from Wycome. Would these humans accept her if they saw her in her full regalia? Would they understand if she wore all her piercings? If she came back one day from an adventure and was wearing her markings again, would they judge her?

She had been pretending for quite some time now. Not in a way that seriously damaged friendships, no. But…she had withheld information. Purposefully. She had done so to protect her Clan. Everything she had done was to protect her Clan.

“Lizbeth, I need you to understand something. It is very important.”

Aurum waited until Lizbeth looked at her, and held her gaze.

“I could not be myself here. Not when I was still worried for what could happen to my Clan. I had no way to ensure my Clan was safe. Now they are all dead. I have only just returned here from seeing to their burial. Now, and only now, can I begin to be myself. Do you understand?”

Lizbeth looked shocked, recoiling slightly from Aurum.

“W-what?”

“I was the First of Clan Lavellan. Clan Lavellan is dead. All of them. I am now the Keeper of Skyhold, and the Inquisition. I have not had the time to readjust. It is hard on me, but I understand your concern. What do you want to do, da’len? How can I bring you peace in this matter?”

Lizbeth stared at her, confused as any young woman could be.

“I don’t understand.”

“What do you want to do? You are my little sister, one I would rather love to ensure the happiness of. You are the of last of my bloodline that I know. You are precious and important to me.”

Lizbeth blinked, trying to figure out what Aurum meant. There had to be a trap, a way to get her in trouble. It had to be something of a trick, a way for her new older sibling to get her into trouble. Da and Ma were constantly talking to her about how she needed to act like a young lady now that she was sixteen, and a viable candidate for marriage. There were no suitors yet, but Da had said now that they knew that Aurum was her sibling, more men would be interested in her, and she had to be ready for that.

“I don’t want to get married.”

Lizbeth’s voice was small, soft. Aurum, had she been human, would maybe have not heard what her sister said. But her ears were long and her senses keen, and Aurum understood the problem.

“What do _you_ want, Lizbeth?”

“I don’t know…”

Aurum hummed beneath her breath, leaning back and considering what they could do. She wanted to help her sister, but she needed to figure out what exact form her help should take. There were many things that Aurum could do for her sibling, but she wanted to make sure she was going to be doing the _right_ thing.

“Why don’t you want to be married?”

“I haven’t done anything with my life yet! Look at you! You’re the Herald, the Inquisitor, and _you’re_ not married! But you’ve done so many thing with your life, and no one’s bothering you about when you’re going to get married or who you’ll marry or make mention of your age and how you won’t be able to have a fecking litter of children for your husband if you don’t get started on it _right now_!”

Aurum bit down on the explanation about all the marriage proposals she had faced, and the fact that she was a First and Keeper and not expected to risk her life having children until she had her Clan in order, or any of the other dozens of things that flashed through her mind in that moment. And she _definitely_ was not going to mention the fact that she was having risqué trysts with her War Commander and in fact had bruises blooming on her skin from him shoving her facefirst into the War Table and his cum slowly dripping out of her and staining her smalls.

She was glad for the steely exterior of a Keeper, because it kept her blush from being readily apparent, and let her mask the fact that her mouth was dry. Aurum shook her head.

“Lizbeth, you don’t have to marry anyone you don’t want to. I will make sure of it.”

Her sister looked at her, expecting some sort trick, or command to join the Chantry or something equally as unlikely to actually happen, but Aurum met her gaze evenly.

“Now, what do you _want_ to do, sister?”

“I want to learn how to hunt. And fight.”

The vehemence made Aurum grin. Ah, the pup had milkteeth still, but there was the needed war-blood in her. The Ferelden people had their Mabari, instead of wolves. Lizbeth would never be a wolf, but she could be a Mabari. With some practice.

“Well you have come to the right person. I’ll teach you all you need to know and we’ll make sure you end up with a set of fangs sharp enough to make anyone unworthy of you regret reaching for your hands.”

Lizbeth looked up at her, and Aurum grinned, revealing teeth that were long and sharp. Lizbeth started, leaning away from her sister in shock and surprise.

“You mean it? You won’t tell Da?”

“Papae has no reason to question what I do with my younger sister. You are part of my Clan, it is my job to see to your education. You want to learn the way of the Hunter, and I will teach it to you.”

Lizbeth still looked leery, as if waiting for the joke. She was a middle child, after all, and Aurum knew that it would probably put her in the common position of not fitting either role ascribed to children readily. It had been as much in her first Clan, and it was a spark of familiarity to see it again in her new Clan. Her Clan. She had to shake herself out of the reverie the thought continued to bring her to. Because this was her Clan, her Hunter, her sister, and she was going to begin treating them as such.

Aurum smiled, her teeth sliding back towards the more normal, dull, flat things that humans, elves, dwarves and qunari alike all expected to see in a mouth. It was not enough for her, not in the slightest. She had a Hunter to train now, and she was not going to be driven away from this new responsibility.

“I’ll go talk to Papae, and gather a few things. Then we can head out on your first lesson. Becoming a hunter takes years of work we just don’t have, but…well that’s never stopped me before. We’ll start with getting you comfortable out in the wild, then move up to identifying plants that can help or hurt you, then trapping small game, and maybe if you’re good and a quick study, we’ll start bowwork with Sera.”

Lizbeth opened her moth to object, but stopped when Aurum fixed her with a stern glare. The process of building someone into being a Hunter was not a quick one, not even for the Elvhen people who had little time, if any to coddle their children before the demands of life fell on their young shoulders. Aurum had been training to be First and Keeper since the moment the Hunters of Lavellan had found her weeping in the snow. Lizbeth was coming to her specialization and job very late in her life, by Dalish standards.

Aurum did not allow herself to think of what her sister’s vallaslin would have been. There was no place in her to enforce the blood writing on her new Clan, not when she knew they would never all follow the Creators. The meaning the Dalish ascribed to those tattoos was simply something she could not parse to those who were not of Dalish lineage as she was. That was fine. There were other ways to prove their readiness to serve the Clan fully, other ways to show dedication to those who shared home and hearth with you, wherever those things were. Aurum would use those instead, because she would never ask or demand another to do something as great as dedicate themselves to her own deities.

Especially not when those deities had stripped her own vallaslin from her face. If those were truly the Gods she had worshipped, perhaps it was best she protect her family and Clan from them.

Aurum stood, gesturing for Lizbeth to follow behind her.

* * *

Little Pup was wandering along in front of her, exploring the wilds around the den, carefully picking her way across the cold ground. Her feet were bound like her old packmates had been, once upon a time. She had shown her Little Pup how to do it, and now Pup was learning how to find her feet in a cold, unforgiving world.

Little Pup crawled, climbed, and explored, and she loped along behind her. Her presence was enough to frighten off any predators that may look at her Little Pup with hunger. If only all predators were as easy to scare off as the non-sentient ones. Bears and wolves of other packs were easily handled when there was a true dire wolf stalked its territory. She was nearly as tall as Little Pup, her shoulder brushing Little Pup’s ribs, something that had surprised the smaller one to see.

She couldn’t help her size though. It was a direct representation of too many things for her to be this large, and while she would never trade her size for anything else, it had once been the source of concern. That did not matter anymore. No, she was just here to watch Little Pup explore and find her paws. The young one climbed and scrambled like all young ones did, still uncertain and unsure of their bodies. Little Pup was not the first one she had done this for.

Little Pup was a little old though. She would never know the forests and trees as keenly as Littlest Pup would. But Littlest Pup was still too young to come out into the forest like this. Maybe in another year.

But Little Pup was learning, and that was good. Little Pup knew now how to test for where the ground was too soft to run, and knew the feeling of sticky mud between her toes. Little Pup had found the plants that she was allergic too, and with a little bit of guidance had made a very good first attempt at a mud poultice to alleviate the itch. Little Pup was smart, clever, and resourceful.

Little Pup would be an asset to any den that took her in, and for now, Little Pup was part of _her_ den. Warmth bloomed deep in her chest, and she rumbled a happy growl when Little Pup playfully kicked water from the ice-cold stream at her. Little Pup wanted to play, so they would play.

With a great shake of her body, she sent the water scattering out of her fur, and looked at Little Pup. It was as good a time as any to teach Little Pup the danger signs for some predators. She lowered her head, crouching down. Her hackles raised, and this time, when she growled, it was the dangerous sound of a wolf defending its territory, not a half-playful yap-growl. Little Pup looked up, took stock of what was in front of her and wisely –

Stayed still.

Little Pup stood very still, hands out from her sides. She had told Little Pup what to do, and now it was time to see if Little Pup remembered when faced with a big scary wolf. Even if there was no real danger for Little Pup right now, she wanted Little Pup to get used to how to act. Little Pup did not meet her gaze, keeping her eyes away from meeting her own. Good.

Next would be an escape, but Little Pup was not yet strong enough to run away from a wolf in pursuit, so Little Pup did the next best thing, and did not move at all.

Testing how much Little Pup remembered would not be complete unless Little Pup was forced out of the comfort of what she had been taught. Little Pup had done well to remember and listen, and she would remember that, but now it was time to see if Little Pup had instinct on the matter presented to her. Other Pups, in the past, had either proven themselves Hunter or Prey and gone back to the Den with a better understanding of what they were compared to what they wanted to believe themselves to be.

She lunged, her massive jaws snapping and a full snarl reverberating through the forest.

Little Pup did not move, but she flinched just the barest amount. Good. Little Pup knew fear, but still would listen to what she had been taught. Little Pup perhaps was a little old, but Little Pup was well on her way to understanding what it meant to be Hunter.

Smoothly, she traded fur for skin, and stood, reaching out to embrace Lizbeth.

“You did very well da’len. So well. I’m very proud of how you handled that. It was well done. Let us go back to Skyhold and get you washed up.”

Lizbeth beamed up at Aurum, pride practically bursting out of her skin. Aurum ruffled her hair, and smoothly slid back into her furred form. It was, after all, cold outside and _she_ had already gone through this back when there had been another Hunter in her den to show her how to do all the things she was teaching the Little Pup how to do. So she was perfectly content to lope along, keeping easy pace with Little Pup as she tracked their way back to the den. The sun was sinking low in the sky, signifying the end of their day.

* * *

As soon as she could see the great gates of the den, she shook her fur off of her and stood once again. Lizbeth beamed at her and Aurum smiled down at her mud-covered sister and tousled her hair. They walked across the long bridge and through the portcullis together, still smiling.

“Go bathe, Lizbeth. I’m going to retire to my room for the evening; I’ll see you in the morning.”

Lizbeth pouted at her, not relishing the idea of a cold bath in such a cold place.

“Don’t you have to bathe too, Aurum?”

“I seem to recall a little one calling me the ‘fecking Inquisitor’, and while you are correct in that, the fecking Inquisitor has her own fecking bath and is going to go enjoy a hot soak with rose petals and wine.”

Aurum grinned down at Lizbeth and winked, jostling her younger sister with a quick side-step that nearly sent the younger one tumbling to the ground. Lizbeth laughed and reached up with a muddy hand to leave a smear across Aurum’s cheek and ear. Aurum snorted at her, blowing a thin stream of fire at her sister, who squealed and darted out of her range. Aurum laughed, loud and bell-bright, and let her sister dart off to go bathe.

Barefoot, with her feet wrapped as the Dalish and the Elvhen people preferred to have, with mud streaking her face and the scent of the wild still sticking to her skin, Aurum walked through the main hall of Skyhold. She was so at peace, at ease, that even the stares of those beneath her did not grate as they usually did. The wildness in her blood, in her bones, in her skin wrapped her in a haze of contentedness that suffused her with an ease of confidence she sometimes lacked.

She waved at Varric, who was embroiled in deep conversation with Cullen, surprisingly enough. Aurum gave Cullen a polite nod before walking briskly to her room.

Cullen stared after her, his mouth dry.

“Something caught your eye, Curly?” Varric said with a poorly-disguised chuckle.

Cullen stammered and rubbed the back of his neck, trying to find the words he needed in order to convince Varric that it wasn’t what it seemed like, but the storyteller was smirking in that way that assured Cullen that there was no fucking way in the entire word that the dwarf was going to let him live it down.

“So is that why you’re here, asking for advice? Got your eye on our grand Inquisitorialness?”

“I-”

“Just want to know how to woo a woman, get some advice from the esteemed writer Varric Tethras, figure out what makes our favorite ray of Sunshine smile?”

Seeing the Commander blush as red as a tomato was well worth everything else he had dealt with in his life. Seeing the Commander blush over the _Inquisitor_ was even better. Because now he knew some juicy piece of gossip that not even that Tevinter Magister could claim to know. The Commander had a crush as wide and long as the Frostbacks on Aurum!

“Girls like Aurum? You gotta be careful. She’s just as likely to kiss you as kill you, metaphorically speaking…I hope. Show her you care, show her you wanna be with her. You got to make her feel special to you, because her entire world has been resting on her shoulders too long for her to be impressed with anything else.”

Cullen stared, mouth agape, not certain what he should do with this information or where to go with it. Varric just smirked at him, and then nodded towards the door to Aurum’s room.

“Go on, then.”

Cullen swallowed the knot in his throat, attempted to find something to say to Varric and floundered when he found nothing. It was almost as frustrating as the fact that he knew that the dwarf was correct and that he had to do something to demonstrate to Aurum that he did in fact –

“ _Fuck_ ,” he cursed softly under his breath as he turned away to Aurum’s room.

He strode off purposefully, leaving a sniggering, if a bit startled dwarf behind him. The Commander had _cursed_ and then gone to do what he had suggested. That was more than just an idle fascination, more than anything else Varric could have hoped for. The fact that Cullen was listening to him and actually going to do the very thing he had suggested spoke of something more than just a new-born interest.

Varric needed to get everyone together for a game of Wicked Grace immediately. He _also_ needed to go gloat to Dorian about knowing something about Aurum that he didn’t.

This was just. Too good.


	28. The Bath

Aurum had her bath filled, and was working on collecting the perfume, flowers and herbs she wanted to spread across the water as she soaked. She had stripped out of her dirty adventuring clothes, and undone the braids she had been using to keep her hair out of her face while taking Lizbeth around the forest. The advantages to having her own expansive rooms and massive bath and access to all of the finer aspects of being the fecking Inquisitor was probably one of the few good things about the turn in her life.

Bath tubs were an unheard of commodity in her clan, and the first dozen times she had tried to bathe in one, Aurum had not enjoyed the feeling of it in the slightest. The water was too still, different than the fast-running streams or chill ice-fed lakes she was used to. But it had not taken her long after their first real battle to understand the singular comfort of a long, hot soak in a bath away from everyone else.

She had never thought she would enjoy being alone so much, but it was a wonderous change of pace to have some time to herself. Aurum had never thought herself particularly solitary, at least not as compared to other Dalish, but there was a sublime sort of pleasure in having a protected place, out of the elements, where she could luxuriate in the warmth of a bath all on her own.

Aurum contented herself with wandering about her room in her bed robe, and nothing more. She was expecting no visitors, and even if she was, no one could fault her for turning them away at this hour. It was well past the time that she accepted visitors outside of her Inner Circle, and Aurum was not known for being a kindly person when asked for things late in the evening.

So when a knock came at her door, she assumed that it was going to be one of her Inner Circle members, and called for them to enter without double-checking. Whatever it was that they wanted, it would not take long, or at least, it would not take so long that she would lose all chance of being able to bathe before sleeping. She had her back to the stairs, but turned when she heard the familiar footsteps of -

“Aurum, I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” Cullen said, the slightest of blushes touching his cheeks as he beheld her state of dress.

He rubbed the back of his neck, averting his gaze from her body for the barest of moments. But it appeared as if Aurum in her bed robe was a bit too much for him to resist looking at, because as she stood there, smiling at him, she watched his golden eyes flick back up to her. Their gazes locked, and her breath caught for a moment.

“Not at all. I was just about to bathe, ma’vhenan.”

The endearment tasted like honey on her tongue. She did not care if he didn’t understand the word, or if it was inappropriate. Not right then. Not when it was just her and him. When it was just the two of them, she could drape all the endearments she wanted to over her lover.

“I-I will come back later then,” he started, backing away as Aurum approached him.

“Nonsense, Cullen.”

Aurum reached for his hand, pulling him gently back into her room. If he was here, she wasn’t going to let him just leave. Her bath was big enough for the both of them. The wildness of her day had not left her entirely, and she was loath to have him leave. He belonged near her. With her.

“Aurum?”

“Stay with me. My bath is big enough for the both of us. I’m sure a nice, _long_ soak in the bath would be good for my Commander. You look so _tense_.”

Her fingers drifted upwards to rub circles on his neck. His muscles were tight beneath her hands, and he sagged against her.

“Aurum, we can’t…the door…someone might come. They…we can’t let them see.”

“I can fix that.”

It only took a wave of her hand, a brief manipulation of the Fade around them, and then there was a click as her door locked.

“Oh. _Oh_. Aurum?”

She purred at him, pulling him closer.

“No one will see us, Cullen.”

“But I-”

“Cullen, no one will come in. You can meet with the Inquisitor whenever you want. You’re my Commander, are you not? You can do this. Stay with me.”

Cullen leaned against her, wrapping an arm around her waist, dipping his head down to kiss her. She kissed him back, pulling him along with her as she stepped backwards towards her bath. One remained hand on his neck, as the other began to work at the straps holding his armor on. Cullen did not stop her, and followed along with every step towards her bath, his hands chasing hers as she worked on getting him out of his clothing, piece by piece.

“We have dealings in Ferelden. I was…hoping you might accompany me,” he mumbled against her lips.

Aurum froze, taken aback. Oh, this was an official visit? She had rather thought it wasn’t, since they were en route to her baths and he was kissing her and working himself out of his clothing. Her mistake.

“Is something wrong?”

She was already disentangling herself from their embrace, reaching backwards towards the armor stand that was holding her current set. She had to make a new set soon – they kept finding better and better pieces and if she came across _one_ more piece of fade-touched ironbark she could finally complete the set she had wanted to make for a while. The old set would do. It was not broken or otherwise incomplete, she just had thought she had time to make something better for herself. Cullen reached for her and pulled her back in close.

“What? No! I-I would rather explain there. If you wish to go.”

Aurum leveled her best incredulous stare at the Commander, trying to understand what was going on, because he was not making much sense at all. Whatever it was, it was important enough for him to ask her to accompany him, but not so important that it required immediate attendance? Odd. Cullen sighed, clearly taking her non-response as a negative one. He let her hands drop from his and started to turn away, his blush turning his entire face scarlet.

“After our bath, then?” she offered, tugging on his belt, trying to get him to come back with her.

He blinked, and then smiled at her, tugging his gloves off as she pulled him towards her bath.

“Of course, my lady.”

This time, he was far more amendable to the idea, reaching to help her remove all of his heavy armor and clothing. Ever practical, he insisted upon folding and stacking everything neatly, and Aurum, after a roll of her eyes and an exasperated gesture to the state of her own previously-worn clothing, assisted in that as well, shaking her head the whole way.

When he was in nothing more than his smalls (and still insisting upon folding every last piece of clothing he took off), she turned her back to him. Her magic came easily to her fingertips, setting upon the copper bath tub, warming the water instantly. Forgoing the herbs and roses for the moment, she poured the perfume onto the water’s surface, letting it mingle with the heated water and scent the air with the heady smell of honey, myrrh, sandalwood and labdanum.

Perfumeries were one of the good things of Val Royeaux, Aurum would admit.

The scent was intoxicating, and would have overpowered any herbal smell or floral scent she could have added to her bath on her own. From behind her, she heard Cullen take a deep breath and turn towards her.

Taking a page from Dorian’s book, Aurum turned, dropping her left shoulder and looking over it to her…lover, her eyes hooded with dark promise as she let her robe fall from her shoulders to the floor. It took the barest flicker of magic to extinguish all of the candles in her room, except for those that framed her copper tub, leaving her bathed in sinful shadows as she delicately stepped into the bath.

She hid the smile that crossed her lips at Cullen’s awed “Maker’s _breath_ ”. He rushed to the bath, and without a moment’s hesitation at the edge, stepped in with her, sinking into the just-shy-of-too-hot water with a groan.

“Mmhm, that’s what I thought,” Aurum cooed at him, waiting for him to situate himself in the water before sliding herself atop of him.

The tub was deep, and large, and even with both of them in it, only the smallest bit of water sloshed out over the sides. Cullen helpfully moved his legs so Aurum would have space, never mind that that space was squarely centered on his lap. She certainly didn’t. They fit together so well it was hard for her to imagine ever wanting to be anywhere else.

Candlelight danced across the water, and for a long while, they just stayed like that, pressed chest-to-chest in perfumed water. Aurum rested her head on his shoulder and he circled his arms around her waist as she slid to his side, her narrow body curled against his. This was sublime. The two of them, and nothing else. Nothing else in all of Thedas mattered in this moment, because it was only them. Them, the water, the candles. Nothing else.

Aurum nuzzled the side of his neck, relishing the closeness, the smell of his skin, even if all she could smell truly was the perfume she had chosen. Because now he smelled of it. And so did she.

“I had some wine brought to my room. There’s only the one glass, however. Would you like some, regardless?” she asked, leaning up to kiss his ear. It was still rounded, shemlen, perfect - _perfect_.

Cullen turned to her, cupping his hand across her cheek and pushing her until she was properly in his lap again. His cock was already half-heard beneath her and he mumbled his assent against her lips. Aurum indulged in the kisses he pressed to her cheek and chin, reaching her magic out for the wine she had prepared earlier. Magic was _handy_.

Cullen only made the smallest sounds of surprise beneath his breath, still unused to such casual uses of magic.

“One of these days, vhenan, this will no longer bother you,” Aurum said as a promise to the future. She could show him that magic was nothing to be afraid of. Nothing to worry about.

She reached past the glass that hovered near the tub, opting to grab the bottle itself, and set the glass down gently on the side table. She flicked the cork of the wine out and took a small sip. It was one of the rare vintages, a fine wine that accented the scent of the perfume in the tub sublimely.

Aurum held the sip of wine in her mouth, leaned in to Cullen and kissed him. He opened his mouth to her at her gentle urging. Wine dripped down his neck, and before it could be wasted and vanish into the water, Aurum quickly chased its path with her tongue. Cullen groaned, and pulled Aurum back up into another kiss.

She took another mouthful of wine, and this time Cullen anticipated the kiss, opening his mouth to accept the wine. Her mouth tingled with the gentle burn of alcohol and the taste of his tongue. Cullen hummed happily with every small drink of wine Aurum’s mouth brought him, and the water was stained with the wine that dripped down his face, leaving trails of vallaslin-red on his chin.

Aurum paused between one sip and the next, staring down at Cullen. She had never thought that she would be so unnerved to see even the hinting of a vallaslin on her lover’s face, but it did not _feel_ right to look down at Cullen in the candlelight and see it there. An odd ball of nervousness knotted her gut, and she stared, trying to figure out where this feeing was coming from. She wiped the wine away, and found peace in looking at him without even the barest echo of her culture marring his face. He had enough scars as it was, she did not need to see him wearing any others.

He sighed and pulled her down into a kiss again, reaching blindly to take the wine from her hand. Aurum allowed him the action, relinquishing her grip on the bottle in favor of running her fingers through his hair. She curled strands around her fingers as Cullen drank deeply out of the bottle, and only took it back when he was done so she could drink . It was a wine that was, perhaps, too fine to drink straight from the bottle in a bath with her War Commander, but there was no one else but them that mattered in the entire world.

Fuck what Dorian would say, what Vivienne would titter – what _anyone else_ in the entirety of Thedas thought. It was her, and him, and no one else.

For now, he was hers alone.

They worked on finishing her bottle of wine together. The water stayed warm, thanks to her magic, leeching stress from their tired, overtaxed bodies. Aurum let the relaxation steal over her, sinking low in the water, pressing as much of herself against Cullen as possible. The hand he did not use to take the wine bottle from her when it was his turn to drink from it drifted down her side, gliding over her hip, and then down her thigh. Aurum hissed when his thumb pressed against the still-new bruise, and masked her discomfort with more wine.

“Sorry, Aurum,” he mumbled sheepishly, but she just shushed him and reached for the wine again. “I’m sorry, I left so many…I didn’t mean to…”

“S’fine, vhenan. I told you I liked them,” she purred, pressing a sloppy kiss to his cheek, curling more of his hair around her fingers.

“I know – I _know_ you did. I just want to be gentler with you. Everything else is hard on you,” he said as his fingers traced the fading scars from Adamant across her stomach. “I want to be the one good thing. I want to be good to you.”

Aurum melted against him, only barely remembering to hold the wine above the water. He caught the bottle, holding it steady before reaching to set it down on the ground, and wrapped his other arm around her waist, holding her steady against his chest.

“Vhenan, you have been…one of the _best_ things.”

He hummed happily and kissed her again, not waiting for her to recognize the movement before his tongue was licking the seam of her lips. Aurum moaned into his mouth, allowing the intrusion, relishing the taste of his mouth tinted with the taste of wine. His response was muffled by her mouth, but the way he pulled her hips against his and ground up against her left very little question as to whether or not he liked what was happening.

They kissed, and enjoyed the slick friction of their slow-building burn for each other. Aurum gasped when he grabbed her ass and pulled her tight to him. She trembled in his arms, rocking her hips against his hard cock, chasing the echoes of pleasure that rippled through him with every slow drag.

Cullen bit back on a curse when she lightly nipped his ear, his hands sliding down to her thighs to press on the bruises he had left her earlier that very day. Aurum hummed and pressed back against his hands, enjoying the dull burn from the bruises roused by his hands. She rose up on her knees in the bath to kiss him again, pulling him back to her, demanding he kiss her again. He obliged without a second urging, his fingers dancing inwards, up her thighs, until his fingers were stroking her cunt.

There was an unasked question in the gentle press of his fingers against her, one Aurum answered with a breathless, desperate “ _Please_.”

“Aurum,” he whispered against her mouth, gently guiding her down onto his cock.

She sank onto him with a whispered prayer, her eyes fluttering closed as he bottomed out inside of her.

“Creators, _Cullen._ ”

This time, they moved slow. In part, it was to keep from the water spilling everywhere and making a mess, and…in part, it was because the first time they had no concern for someone finding them in the middle of the act. Her door was locked. She was the Inquisitor. If she was to have a late meeting with one of her Advisors, that was not looked oddly upon.

Aurum pressed her forehead to his, rolling her hips in time with his movements, biting her lip and closing her eyes to savor the moment. Cullen stared at her, refusing to look anywhere but her as pleasure consumed her. He wanted to watch every moment. He wanted to know what she looked like when she fell into pleasure, and he never, ever wanted to forget this.

“C-Cull _-e-en,_ ” she moaned, her cunt clenching down on him.

He never relented his movements. Not once. He could only manage small, shallow thrusts, rocking against the deepest parts of Aurum, dragging his cock against the oversensitive pleasure-centers there. She seized up again, frozen in pleasure, her breath stuck in the back of her throat. Cullen pressed his thumb against her clit, and lunged up to kiss her again, cradling the back of her head with his other hand.

It was not so much a kiss as a growling mess of teeth and tongue as he pushed her towards a third orgasm in as many minutes.

Cullen cursed prolifically against her mouth, begging her to come again, telling her in breathless whispers about how it felt when she clenched around his cock, how she set his blood afire and he never wanted to be parted from this moment. Aurum whimpered, opening her mouth to try and talk back, to let him know how much he meant to her, but he was bulling over her words with his own with exquisite ease.

“Aurum, _Aurum_ , you feel so fucking _good_ , my God, you have no idea how much I think of you. You were gone and I couldn’t- I wanted you back home, back _here_ so badly. I ached for you and now…and now…”

His words fell into a long, incoherent moan, and he held her tight to him, nearly crushingly hard as he came.

Aurum shuddered, resting her head on Cullen’s shoulder, trying to catch her breath. His cock was softening inside of her, but she was not going to move off of him until he insisted. The water was still warm, and the candlelight flickered around them.

“Ma’arlath,” she whispered, trying out the taste of those words on her tongue. Cullen hummed a question, and Aurum shook her head. It was not the time to explain it.

“I should go, Aurum. It is late, and there’s only so much time I can spend here before tongues will wag. If Leliana sends a scout to investigate…”

Of course.

It was time. Appearances needed to be kept up, and there was no place for their passion in the eyes of the others. She understood. Aurum nodded, but did not move, not right away.

He did not make her move, either, gently rubbing her back and shoulders, mumbling things she couldn’t hear beneath his breath. She stayed as close as she could, keeping the water warm for both their sake. The buzz of alcohol had not left her ears, and it made her feel so loose and pliant against him. Cullen kissed her shoulder, and her ear, and her temple, and Aurum smiled. Oh, she was in deep, drowning in feelings that were clawing the way to the surface too fast, but right _now_ it did not matter. She still had him.

When they finally parted, she dried herself with the lone towel in her room before offering it to Cullen. She put her dressing gown back on and watched, transfixed, as Cullen dressed himself, not offering her assistance. She rather enjoyed watching him, as it was, and with a lick of her lips, she only stepped towards him when he was turning towards her, pulling his gloves on.

“Vhenan, when and where should I meet you for our…dealings in Ferelden?” she asked as he stepped towards the stairs down.

He blushed scarlet, and reached up to worriedly brush his curling, still-wet hair out of his eyes.

“O-oh. Tomorrow, by the stables. Around noon? I should be done with my paperwork by then, and I will meet you there. ”

She blinked. That did not sound like official business. Official business started at the gates of Skyhold, not within it, by the stables that Dennet kept spotless. Official business started at the staging areas where the recruits could stand together to receive orders. Official business started with gathering the others, not meeting one of her advisors alone. This sounded…

“Are you asking me out on a date, Cullen?” Aurum asked, trying to keep her voice even.

Somehow, Cullen managed to turn even redder than he had been before and he stammered a series of syllables that Aurum could not parse into words over the trilling happiness in her chest. He made his excuse to leave and all but fled from her room, fumbling with the lock on her door before escaping into Great Hall.

Aurum’s smile did not fade. Perhaps this was not the doomed relationship she thought it was. Perhaps she could let herself hope for something more, hope for her words to one day to not be spoken in vain. Perhaps he would let Skyhold and the Inquisition see that they were together. Perhaps he would kiss her on the battlements to the cheers of their Clan as he finally accepted her and let the world know she was accepted by him. 

Perhaps.


	29. The Lake

Solas looked up from his evening painting project at the sound of steps rapidly approaching his little study. It was not often that people crossed through it so late at night, so he was quite surprised when Commander Cullen strode in, his hair curly and still obviously wet, and his face still touched with a blush.

“Commander Cullen, what brings you he-”

“Solas, if I had questions on…translations, could you help me?”

The elf turned to face him completely, confusion apparent on his face.

“I’m uncertain of what you mea-”

“I would like to learn some Dalish. To su-,” he caught himself on the word. “To speak easier with Aurum.”

Solas’s eyebrows shot up high on his forehead and he stared at Cullen, trying to understand what the human meant. It was late in the evening, too late for this sort of conversation, and if he dallied too long, the paint would be unworkable. He was going to have to turn the Commander down, anyway. He was not going to teach Cullen any _elvhen_. Because it was not appropriate.

“I am sorry, Commander, I cannot help you. Perhaps have Aurum teach you, if you wish to understand her better.”

Cullen nodded, too quickly, and briskly walked past Solas, the blush on his face deepening again. As he passed by Solas, the elf blinked. There was a…scent on the air. One he was familiar with, only because Aurum and Dorian and Vivienne had dragged him into one of the shops in Val Royeaux on one of the few occasions Aurum had decided to have all four of the mages of her Inner Circle go with her on an adventure.

He stared at Cullen’s quick-moving back and tried to find any other explanation for Cullen smelling like Aurum’s favorite perfume that was _not_ that Cullen and Aurum were –

Solas sighed, rubbing his brow with the heel of his palm to keep from smearing paint on his face. Really? Aurum and Cullen?

These younglings were going to be the absolute death of him. The only thing he could think to do was to keep it to himself and hope that the two of them would continue being as discrete as they _had_ been until this particular moment. Because he could not see any of the others in the Inquisition taking this news as gracefully as he. Goodness knows what _Dorian_ would do if he found out his friend the Commander was tupping his ‘Keeper’ the Inquisitor.

Solas shook his head and returned to his painting. Perhaps if he did not think of it, it would not bother him any further. This was ridiculous.

* * *

Aurum would never admit to rushing through her morning meetings and paperwork. It would be impossible to accuse of her doing that, regardless. It did not seem as if she was rushing, at least, not to casual observers. Josephine did her best not to grin until the Inquisitor was out of sight, and hurriedly wrote a message to Leliana and sent it along with a page. Oh the Spymaster was going to have so much fun watching them!

Skyhold was buzzing in that quiet way it did when there was particularly juicy gossip hovering in the halls. The rumors were quiet, held in the chests of those who had their suspicions, and only shared with those they could trust. Others held it close to their vest out of friendship, not wanting to betray trust just yet, and others held it close because it was not appropriate to talk about. But that did not keep the old stones from humming with the barely-contained excitement and confusion of those ‘in the know’.

Aurum was blessedly unaware of that.

No, she was vibrating with her own excitement, trying to keep her hopes small in case she had misread the situation and Cullen wasn’t asking her out on a…private excursion. She had misunderstood him before, after all, and did not necessarily want to be disappointed in this. Aurum wanted, desperately, for this to be what she hoped it was. She wanted Cullen to be comfortable with their relationship being known to Skyhold. She wanted him to not be afraid of the possibility of blowback from anyone.

She wanted _him_.

Aurum did her best not to fidget or let the ball of energy in her chest explode out of her. She was not going to get her hopes up. She was not going to think about how it would be to have a relationship with Cullen that was more than shadow and whisper that melted away in the dawn’s light. She was not going to think about how it would be to dance with him at Halamshiral, not on some secluded balcony, but on the main dance floor, in full view of all gathered.

She wasn’t going to think about waking up to him in the morning. She wasn’t thinking about how his hair was a curly mess in the morning, or after he bathed, and she _definitely_ wasn’t thinking at all about how it felt when his fingers had absently brushed across hers as he had left her room last night.

Aurum would never ever, **_ever_** admit it, but it was obvious to anyone who knew what to look for (like a certain Tevinter mage who had been watching her slowly bounce from foot to foot for the past half hour) that she was nervously waiting for –

“Cullen!” she squeaked when she saw the familiar fur mantle approaching, lifting a hand in greeting.

Mortified at the crack in her voice, Aurum shook her head, put her hand down and swallowed harshly. She shouldn’t act like that. He was still the Commander in public. Was calling him by his given name too forward, too intimate? He did not go around calling her by her name, either of them. It was always “Inquisitor”, at the very least. Was that the better way to do things? Aurum had no idea. She fretted over her clothing, trying to remember how she had seen the other Ferelden humans interact. Trying to compare how Cullen acted to how Dorian acted was worthless, because it was _Dorian_ , and she really did not know enough about human culture especially Fereldan culture and-

“You look lovely, Aurum.”

She blushed clear to the tips of her ears, rocking back on her heels for a moment, her eyes wide with shock. He had used the name she had given him and reached out to put a hand on her elbow. Professionally acceptable, yes, but still more contact than he usually allowed between the two of them in public.

“U-uh, thank you, Cullen. You look very handsome.”

He chuckled and rubbed the back of his neck. For nearly a heartbeat too long they stood, each nearly too consumed with blushing to carry on their conversation, before, in tandem –

“Are you ready to-”

“I have my Hart sad-”

“I didn’t mean to interru-”

“I’m ready to go wh-”

“Uhm-”

“Ah-”

Aurum’s cheeks felt like they were burning, she was blushing so hard. She reached up to scrub her hands across her cheeks and looked away from Cullen. Of course, she just so happened to make eye contact with Sera, sitting pretty on a roof, and of course, the elvhen archer had to make a crass gesture with both her hands that only brought the blush back. Aurum shoved both of her hands into her pockets and stared at the ground.

“A-are you ready to go, Inquisitor?”

Aurum nodded, and pretended not to notice how he had defaulted to her title instead of her name. That was fine, actually. Anything to keep herself from being an embarrassment any more than she already had been.

Dennet had been kind enough to saddle up Cullen’s favored mount, and Aurum had handled her Hart’s preparation, so they were off in short order, riding alongside each other, without an armed contingent of soldiers. In fact, as they rode away from Skyhold, the only reminder of the Inquisition was the caged ravens Leliana had insisted they bring along. Thankfully, they were some of the quieter birds, which left Cullen and Aurum in comfortable silence as they rode.

There was the sound of leather creaking, the wind in the trees, and the two of them, not saying anything. It was not an awkward silence, but a contemplative one.

“Thank you for coming with me, Aurum.”

“Oh! Of course, Cullen. I just don’t know where we are going?”

He laughed.

“I want it to be a surprise. We should get there by sundown.”

“Oh and then you’ll get to spend the night with the lovely Inquisitor, alone in your tent? I _see_ Serah Rutherford. What ever shall the others say, now that you’ve taken me from our Clan for late-night camping?”

Cullen blushed and stammered, until Aurum rode up next to him and jostled his leg with her own and grinned at him. He relaxed by fractions, and Aurum noted, with some small amount of confusion, that he reached for something in his pocket. That was a new tic, one she had never seen before, and it intrigued her. This whole thing was very, very confusing. She wished it wasn’t, she wished that she had the courage to ask about what was going on, but she didn’t.

Because as long as she didn’t ask or question anything, she could pretend that it was something more than it might be.

“Did…you sleep well, Aurum?”

She blinked, and looked to Cullen.

“Y-yes. I did. Did you?”

“Very.”

Aurum grinned broadly, pleased by that much. They were alone, and could speak of such things, but it was still…oh, it made her heart swell. She and Cullen, alone in truth, with no one who could come upon them and stop whatever moment was coming to fruition between them, and she was buzzing with the anticipation of what they could say and do now that there was no Inquisition haunting them.

“If you ever want to use my baths again, just tell me, vhenan.”

“I will take you up on that. Paperwork does a number on my shoulders.”

“You could always come to me if you want another massage, Cullen. I always have time for you.”

Cullen grinned.

“Anything to have me shirtless in your bed, hmm, Aurum?”

“Yes, of course. I thought I made that clear enough when I invited you up to my room with the intent to get you naked.”

He coughed politely, and rubbed the back of his neck. He did not go so far as to squirm in the saddle, but the blush that had dogged his cheeks intensified. Cullen licked his lips, and looked at her askance. Aurum smirked at him and licked her teeth, rolling her hips in times with her Hart’s steps. Perhaps it was an exaggerated roll of her hips, perhaps it was done specifically to get Cullen’s gaze down to her ass, where it lingered for a good long while.

“I am…finding myself suddenly worried about that knot between my shoulders moreso than I had been previously.”

Aurum threw her head back and laughed, and Cullen joined in with her, shaking his head.

* * *

“Cullen, vhenan, where are we?” she asked, walking down the old pier with Cullen.

Night had fallen, and he had barely waited for her to dismount her Hart before urging her away from their camp (they’d set it up later, but right now there was something more important), and leading her down a winding trail to the lilypad covered lake. It was beautiful, it really was.

“You walk into danger every day. I wanted to take you away from that, if only for a moment.”

Aurum and Cullen stopped at the very end of the pier, the water lapping at their boots. The thought was touching, it really was, but she had no idea why, of all places, he would choose to bring her here. This was not the relaxation and freedom from danger she would have expected him to bring her to. There was nothing outrageously safe about where they were. It was as open as the Hinterlands, and even though there were dottings of houses on the edge of the lake across from them, they were still pretty far removed from where other people could be called from if danger came. Cullen had left his sword with his horse, and she had left her staff with her Hart. It was not, after all, particularly soothing.

The answer she thought of asking was answered before she could form it into words.

“I grew up not far from here. This place was always quiet.”

Cullen leaned against one of the support posts for the pier, smiling, and looking at her. He was lost in some fond memory, beaming at the thoughts of what had been once, and Aurum was not very fast with her answer.

“Did you…come here often, then?”

The idea of being in one place long enough to form an emotional bond to it was…odd for Aurum. Dalish were nomadic, and not always by choice. To know that Cullen had counted this place as a safe memory did not really connect with any part of her. Not truly. So she stood to his side, looking out over the lake and wondering what it was like to know how to swim.

“I love my siblings, but when we were children, they were _very_ loud. I would come here to clear my head.”

She smiled.

“Of course, they always found my eventually.”

“You were happy, here?”

“I was. I still am.”

He stared out over the lake, and for a while, there was silence. This was a place from his childhood and Aurum distinctly felt as if she were intruding upon something, some _place_ she did not quite belong. Not quite comfortable, and definitely needing to stretch her legs out after a long day of riding, Aurum shifted back and forth on the balls of her feet, watching the pier shift with her.

“Alone with a mage, serah? Aren’t you concerned? Won’t you be in trouble?” she asked, jokingly.

“The Templars have rules on…fraternization. But I’m not longer bound by them.”

She blushed, and her ears pinned back flat on her head. Cullen spoke to the great wide expanse of the lake, and that gave Aurum the time to recover from her shock. She _knew_ that he wasn’t, of course she had known that, but it was still so odd of Cullen to speak so plainly about it when he had not really wanted to do so before. So she pressed.

“I know you aren’t, vhenan. But you have – you’ve born witness to the worst of us mages. You have suffered at the hands of people like me. Do you ever look at me and see that there? Does it bother you?”

Aurum looked up at him from the corner of her eyes, trying to judge if she had really overstepped. She was almost certain this was not the reason that Cullen had brought her all the way out here. No, she was pretty positive that he had not had her ride all day to make camp by some wet lakeside so they could talk about how he felt about her being a mage in truth. But it was something she wanted to know about, given their relationship.

“I don’t – If I’ve given you reason to doubt that I…” he sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Of course I have. Whatever I fear of magic, Aurum, I see none of that in you.”

Aurum worried her lip for a moment. She had to swallow her words. Because it would not behoove her to tell him that just because he could not _see_ something in her did not mean that it was not already there. She hoped to never have to make him see what there was inside of her – what he already knew could be within any mage – but if there was never a reason for him to see it, there was no reason for her to mention it.

“The last time I was here was the day I left for Templar training. My brother, he gave me this,” Cullen said, pulling a small object from the pocket Aurum had seen him worrying before. “It just happened to be in his pocket, but he told me it was for luck.”

He held out his hand for her to see what was resting there. It was an old, well-worn coin.

“Templars are not supposed to carry such things. Our _faith_ should see us through, we are told. Nothing but our Faith and the Order.”

“So you broke the Order’s rules? I’m shocked, serah Cullen. After all that…to break a rule before you were even a Templar.”

He rolled his eyes at her. Aurum snickered.

“Until a year ago, I was very good at following them. Most of the time. But this was the only thing I took from Ferelden that the Templars didn’t give me.”

The coin suddenly gained heft and importance in Aurum’s mind, as she ascribed all of the meanings that it could possibly bear in Cullen’s mind to it. After everything he had been through, all of the misery and pain, he had held on to this lucky coin his brother had given him years ago. If it was something the Templar Order had not wanted him to have, she was certain he would have not shown it to many other people, or perhaps even _anyone_ since the last time he had stood on this dock.

That was a frighteningly large amount of importance to be placed on some Fereldan coin.

“Humor me, Aurum.”

He reached for her hand, and pulled it close, only to press his lucky coin into her palm and closer her fingers over it. She froze.

“We don’t know what you’ll face before the end. This can’t hurt.”

The coin was warm in her hand, and Aurum did not know what to do with it. To reject a gift like this was of the utmost rudeness, and she could not bear to be rude, not after that. But she had nothing to give him in return, no way to show him how much she wanted him to come back safe to her at the end of this all as well. Not unless –

“I’ll keep it safe, Cullen. I promise.”

“Good. I know it’s foolish, but I’m glad.”

He pulled her close, still holding her hand between them, just in case she dropped his- _their_ luck. Aurum, of course, would never dream of dropping it. As soon as she had a moment, she would make a setting for it and wear it around her neck. Her pockets were not safe enough for something like this. This was something so precious, so important, that it only ever belonged near the most protected part of her chest.

They kissed on the pier of his childhood, on the pier where he dedicated himself to the life that brought him nothing but pain until it brought him to her. And now, they were standing on that pier again and he was handing his luck to her and trying to get her to come home safely at the end of this.

He started to pull away, and Aurum pulled him back to her, kissing him, pressing herself against his armor, rolling her hips against his, trying to chase more pleasure. Cullen had given her a gift unlike anything else, and she had to find how to reciprocate. This was a gift…it was a gift beyond compare. No gems, no gold, no land or deed compared to it.

“Cullen, ma’vheraan, ara sal’shiral, thank you,” she whispered against his lips. “This is the most precious thing I have ever received.”

He laughed nervously, but she shushed him with another kiss.

“I am serious, ma’vheraan, ma’vhenan. I want to show you something, I want to give you something just as precious. Please, come with me.”

“Aurum?”

She shook her head, stepping away from him. She had to get these words out of her mouth or she feared she would never say them and they would end up just going back to Skyhold in the morning and she would lose the chance to ever say the words or show him again.

“Please. We can sleep tonight, but in the morning, we’ll send a raven to Leliana to explain where we are going. I want to show you something as important as your luck is.”

He nodded, still clearly confused, and Aurum ducked her head, holding tight to his talisman with one hand, and tight to his hand with the other. She did not want to let him go. Not when they were so far away from everyone else. Here, at least, he did not have to pretend, and they could share affection they did not usually get to express between each other. Cullen held her hand, pulling her close to his side and leaning over to kiss her temple.

“I’ll make the arrangements in the morning, Aurum. Let’s go sleep, then?”

She hummed, pressing close to him, knocking her shoulder against his. He shook his head and jostled her back, and together they returned to their camp for the evening.


	30. The Visit

Aurum had sent the raven back to Skyhold, with some excuse she had manufactured, by the time Cullen exited their tent, and was already striking their camp before he had managed to eat the porridge she had made for breakfast for them both. He was still eating the candied peaches when she swung up into her Hart’s saddle and gestured for him to do the same.

“We have a long way to go, Cullen. The Free Marches are a long way from here, and we’ll need to get to the forests there before noon to get…there. Luckily I still know some of the ferrymen who can get us to where we need to go pretty quickly, once we get to the coast.”

“W…Alright, Aurum. Why are we going to the Free Marches?”

She paused, mid-adjustment on her stirrup and looked up at him. There was a slight blush on her cheeks, and she offered him a wan smile.

“I have…dealings in the Free Marches, Cullen. I was hoping you might accompany me, if you would like.”

Cullen laughed, and mounted his own horse.

“Lead on, my lady.”

* * *

“Leave the horses and our things here. They will be safe. Take off your armor and boots. This is sacred ground.”

Aurum spoke softly, stripping her own boots off and leading her Hart away from the edge of the forest in front of them. She reached up to braid her hair out of her eyes and waited, patiently, for Cullen to do as she had asked. He was slow to dismount, questions burning his lips. But Aurum was fidgeting moreso than he had ever seen her do before, her ears flicking back, and up, and to the left and right faster than he could track. She danced her weight from side to side as she waited on him to strip out of the offending items, staring into the forest.

“Aurum, is everything well?”

“I haven’t been back here in a long time, is all. That’s my mother’s tree, right there,” she said, pointing to an ironbark tree sitting at the edge of the forest. “This is the closest I’ve been to her since I was preparing to take my vallaslin.”

She spoke quickly, sharply, looking to the smaller tree on the edge of the forest, and then away, and then back again, and then away again.

“Do you want to…go see her?”

“No. Yes. Later. After this. After all of this is done, I will see her. It is not right. Not yet.”

She shuddered, regardless, and turned towards him, her back to the tree that unnerved her so much.

“We’re going into the forests where I grew up. There’s something that should be there that I want to show you, Cullen. Walk with me?”

He nodded and reached for her hand. But Aurum, so consumed with her thoughts, had already pulled her hand away from his, crossing her arms and staring into the forest as she struck out. So he settled for walking just behind her, trying to carefully pick out the easiest places for him to step now that he had no shoes. Aurum did not seem bothered by the twigs, or the sharp leaves or anything they walked over, but her pace was leisurely enough that he could keep up, even with his hesitance in walking.

She maintained silence in the forest, and Cullen did not want to interrupt the suffocating silence. The forest closed in around them, and it soon became very clear that she had wanted them to be here at noon for a reason – the forest was dark. Even knowing that the sun was high in the sky above them, inside the forest, the air was dark. Heavy. Cool. The silence seemed as much a part of the atmosphere as anything else he saw, but Aurum seemed to be preoccupied to the point where he should not interrupt.

She walked for a long time, and Cullen followed behind.

Aurum knew where she was going, that much was obvious, but Cullen was completely lost. He did not know where they were, and if Aurum suddenly abandoned him, he was more than certain he would never manage to find his way out of the forest.

Ahead of them, the darkness faded, opening up to a hidden meadow, lit with golden sunlight. Aurum froze at the boundary between shadow and light, her jaw clenched tight.

“Aurum?”

“It’s…I didn’t think I’d come back here. Cullen,” she started, stepping into the sunlit meadow, holding her hand out to him to pull him with her into the light. “This is where _I_ grew up.”

Sitting in the meadow, alone, and abandoned by all else, was a single aravel. There were depressions in the grass that surrounded the meadow, but there were no other aravels in the area. Just the one. Alone.

“After Wycome, the other clans brought our aravels back here. Those who survived Wycome came and took theirs back, or their families from other clans did. Mine’s the only one left…because I…mmm, doesn’t matter. No one will touch it, or disturb what is left in there. This is – _was_ my home, Cullen. An’daran atish’an.”

She bowed her head to him, and walked closer. Aurum held his hand and reached for the warm wood of her aravel. Her name, carved in the curling script of Elvhen adorned the frontmost post of the aravel, marking it as hers, and hers alone. Carefully, she traced her fingers across the old carving, a small smile on her face.

“You’re the first shemlen who’s ever seen it. Sorry, first _human_. It’s hard. I, uh, I didn’t think that I would be back here. Or see this again. It’s…it’s just…it’s just that I never thought that I would see it again...”

“Why?” Cullen asked as Aurum jumped up into her aravel, and reached backwards to help him up. It was much easier to move when he wasn’t in all of his armor, but it was still awkward to try and climb into the very unfamiliar ship.

“Because, I didn’t think _I_ would be here again. I cannot take my aravel back to Skyhold, and the few things in here are not of particular import now that my clan is gone. ”

Aurum ducked back into the living quarters of her aravel, neatly avoiding the lines holding her sails in place. Cullen managed to clip his forehead on the line she had avoided, and was rubbing his head when he entered her cabin.

As soon as he was through the door, Aurum had her hands wrapped around the back of his neck and she was pulling him into a drugging kiss. He stumbled and fell, pinning Aurum beneath him. He immediately tried to pull away, worried he had hurt her, but she held him down to her, spread out beneath him on the pillows and blankets of her aravel. She hooked one of her legs around his hips and moaned his name into his mouth.

“Mmn, _Cullen_.”

He braced himself on his forearm, holding himself up with one arm as he pushed himself away from her to take stock of the situation.

“Aurum?” he started, trying to remember what she had been talking about before she pulled him down.

“Ma’vheraan, sathan,” she whimpered, her hands still tangled in his hair, her lips pressed desperately to his. “Please, my lion, please,” she amended, trying to remember her Common.

He kissed her hard, pushing her down into the threadbare pillows she had slept on every night until there was nowhere else he could push her. Aurum whimpered beneath him, surrendering to Cullen’s onslaught, begging him to continue because she needed this, Creators did she need this. He obliged her deliciously, grinding down against her, moaning her name, doing everything in his power to bring her the same amounts of pleasure she brought him.

She panted beneath him, writhing to try and get more contact with him, more touch, more anything from him. But it was never enough. Gods, it was never enough.

“Maker’s _breath_ , **Aurum**.”

Cullen growled and bit her lip, and then dipped his head down to mouth at her neck and throat. Aurum sobbed, throwing her head back and gritting her teeth against the dalish obscenities that were burning her throat. He wouldn’t understand them, he didn’t speak her language and it was rude, regardless.

But _Creators_ she was in her _aravel_ with her _lover_.

 _Creators_ , she was home and home again in his arms. If she wanted to grind out “vera em su tarasyl”, no one would necessarily blame her, but she wanted him to know what she wanted from him. From this. From them. From him. No one could take it from her either. She had him. Here.

He bit her neck, just barely hard enough to break her out of her reverie, and when he pushed himself up and away from her, she did not pull him back down to her. Cullen stared at her in utter adoration. Carefully, gently, he traced his fingers down her jaw and Aurum leaned into the affection, greedily seeking out more of his touch.

“Cullen, ma’vheraan, I…have never allowed another in my aravel. You are my first.”

He blinked, and after a long moment, turned just the cutest shade of red.

“W-what? Is this some sort of Dalish doubletalk because I-”

Aurum rolled her eyes and shoved his shoulder, wiggling out from underneath him and getting comfortable in the covered cabin of her aravel.

“No, it’s not. I’ve had _plenty_ of sex, don’t worry about that. I haven’t ever allowed someone else to be in my aravel though. It was my home, and as you note, not exactly built for two people unless those people are very comfortable with each other. No matter who I was ‘with’, we would always find a tent, or just a nice place in the forest. Dalish don’t…share aravels easily.”

She grinned, crinkling her nose at him. He kissed her. He pressed his thumb against the dip of her throat, and she arched against him, nearly sliding into his lap in her sudden rush to get close to him again. Aurum kissed him until she felt her lungs ache for air, and then kissed him until her vision started to swim. Anything to keep close to him. Anything at all.

Cullen moaned into her mouth, hesitantly pulling her closer and kissing her harder when she came willingly back into his lap.

“So, welcome to my aravel,” she said, breathless when they finally parted. “Until the Conclave, this was where I lived. My entire life, ever since I was found, this has been my home. I’ve never invited anyone else in. Not into here. I wanted to show you this. I wanted…you gave me your luck, and I thought I should show you mine.”

He stared, open mouthed at her. Aurum grinned again, rolling her hips against his just to reassure herself that he still liked having her there. Cullen growled and bit at her lip, tugging on it to wipe the smirk from her face.

“Aurum, that’s not necessary. You – you didn’t _have_ to do this.”

“I know. But I wanted to. Here, let me show you.”

A wave of her hands, and her little green magelights suddenly made much more sense. All around the perimeter of her cabin were little glass jars – expensive baubles for a Dalish, as glass was fragile, and a rarity they could not always afford – and the lights hovered within them, casting the entire cabin in a magical, but comforting, green glow. All around them were the accouterments of her life and livelihood before the Inquisition, and Aurum smiled at them.

“This was my first staff. Deshanna made it for me when I was still learning,” she said, pulling a small, obviously child-sized staff out from behind one of the support beams of her cabin, not moving from his lap as she did so.

Holding it delicately in her hands, Aurum ran her hands over the well-worn ironbark, smiling at the little amber almost-gem set at the top of it. With a small moment of hesitation, she let Cullen hold it, who took it with the utmost reverence, as if he could not believe he was being shown such a thing.

“It’s so _small_.”

She watched with rapt attention as he closed his much larger, sword-roughened hands over the old, old relic of her past.

“I was a child, Cullen. About the age that a lot of other da’len have to be protected from, ah, roving Templars. Deshanna made that for me so I could start defending myself. I wasn’t very good at it. But I tried.”

Cullen masked his emotions well, but he passed the staff back for Aurum to take and replace. She reached to put it back, and as she withdrew her hands, she pulled a second, small box from some hidden place that Cullen did not see. Her fingers fluttered over a complex lock, soft clicks filling the air, and when the box finally opened, Aurum did not show him the contents. Instead, with the ease born of years of practice, she pulled her old piercings out of their storage and replaced them.

Cullen swore beneath his breath as Aurum looked up at him. She smiled, and the two rings in her lower lip moved with the movement. Her tongue peeked out from between her lips, and he saw the lazurite stud she wore click against her teeth. He couldn’t breathe from the sudden need for her.

Two piercings, one on either side of her lip, adorned with silver hoops, and Cullen wanted to know how they felt against his lips, taste the touch of lazurite on his tongue as well. She reached up and placed a motley of earrings in her lobes, connecting some with chains, until a much different Aurum was staring at him. This one was undeniably Dalish. Strange and outrageously tantalizing, Cullen suddenly had the urge to –

“Is this…how you usually dressed?”

“What, the piercings? Yes. I did not wear them to the Conclave. They stand out, you see. But I wore other clothes. Nothing like this,” Aurum said, gesturing down to her current outfit.

He had to bite his lip to keep from saying something crass.

“Could I see? What you used to wear, I mean?”

Aurum laughed, the same way she always did whenever she was well and truly happy, but with her face glittering with metal and gems, it was –

Cullen leaned forward, and pulled her into a kiss. Her piercings pressed against his face and the sensation was so _new_ but at the same time so _familiar_ that it made him ache all the harder for her. She kissed him back, a laugh still on her beautiful lips.

“Ma’vheraan, I cannot change my clothes if you do not let me go. Wait outside the aravel, and I’ll change, then we can go.”

“Go?”

“Well we can’t stay the night here. Now mush on out of here, my lion.”

He shook his head, but obliged, carefully backing out of the cabin, and after a brief scuffle with her aravel’s tangling lines and sails, found himself standing in a silent forest, surrounded by trees as old as Arlathan, waiting for his…Aurum to come out and introduce herself as herself this time. He knew it could not have been more than a few minutes that he stood there, barefoot in the middle of a forest, but it felt like ages.

Her aravel moved, and Cullen looked to where he expected to see Aurum, and instead, he saw the Keeper of a Dalish clan, holding her staff easily in her hands, her hair braided out of her eyes, her face dotted with piercings, and her clothing sinfully tight – stretched and straining in some places - so as to not be tangled in the lines of her sails.

Around her neck, hanging from a short silver chain, was his luck. She wore it proudly, as proudly as she wore everything else, and in her hand, another chain.

“You are…beautiful, Aurum.”

She shrugged, and jumped down from her aravel, walking towards him. Her thighs were bare, and she was wearing no true armor, but there were hintings of places where she could easily attach heavier armor if she wanted to. A new pack hung at her hip, full to bursting with things that were undoubtedly important to her, and things he would ask her about later. But Aurum was undeniably Dalish in that moment, and he reached for her. She avoided his grasp, and reached out to give him what she held in her hand. Sitting on the chain, centered on her palm was a black and red ring, carved with curling Dalish inscriptions and bearing a wolf’s head.

“This is the ring of the Keeper of Clan Lavellan. Deshanna’s ring, and the ring of every Keeper of Lavellan that preceded her,” Aurum said softly, reaching up to loop the chain over Cullen’s neck, letting the ring rest on his chest. “It is the most important thing to a clan. It signifies our desire to keep our Clan safe, at all costs. I was going to wear this ring, but Clan Lavellan is gone, and I’m trusting you to keep its last member safe.”

Cullen gaped at her, reaching up to close his hand over the ring.

“Aurum, why are you-”

“You gave me your luck. I’m giving you a promise. The same one I was to give my Clan after Deshanna’s passing, the same one Lavellan has said since our noble house fell.”

She pressed her forehead to his, and stared intently at him. The words came easily to her as she pressed her hand to where the ring of her clan now hung from his neck, but she knew better than to recite the oath in Dalish. She wanted Cullen to understand the weight of what she intended by giving him that ring. He had given her something precious. She would give something of equal value in return.

“Ma dirtha’vhen’an, lethallin, none shall happen to you before it befalls I. Your breath’s coming will not cease before mine. Your belly shall not hunger before mine. Your blade shall not grow dull on our enemy’s ribs before mine. None shall befall you before I have tasted it first. No path will you tread unknowing where it ends. I will have been there first, and I will show you the way. No hunt will you be sent on alone. I have walked there before, and I know the animals. No place will I send you unaware. I will scout the trees and air and earth and water before I send you anywhere. For you are more precious than gold, more valued than any knowledge, any artifact, any _thing_ that could be brought to my hands. No one shall harm you while I stand. No one shall hurt you before I bear the mark of their blade. Vhen’ma, you are everything to me, and this is the promise I will bear from now, until uthenera takes me from you.”

Cullen swallowed heavily, and covered her hands with his own. The intensity of her speech had left him breathless, and there was a moment when all he could do was stare into her hypnotic eyes in wonder. The world was silent around them. No birds called, no halla walked. There wasn’t even the press of magic. Only words that filled the air with a promise that seemed to be just so much more than mere words.

“Aurum, I – I do not know what to say.”

She chuckled and pressed her mouth to his for a quick kiss. The words hung heavily in the air and she needed to find a way to make the moment seem less

“How _abooout_ , “Yes, Aurum, I’ll play Wicked Grace with you when we get back to Skyhold because Varric bet you ten sovereigns you couldn’t do it and it’ll be fun”? That sounds like a place to start.”

Cullen laughed and stole a kiss from her, breaking the magic of the moment, before she danced out of his grasp, and began leading him out of the forest, still wearing her traditional clothing, and her previously unseen piercings.

“Come on then, we have to get back to Skyhold, regardless of whether or not you’ll join us in a game. Leliana is going to get her panties all knotted if she has to send scouts out to find us.”

“I don’t even want to know how you know anything about Leliana’s panties.”

“Elves are very good panty thiefs, ma’vheraan. I am particularly fond of that orlesian silk pair you try and hide.”

He blushed scarlet and gaped at her, and Aurum **cackled**. Cullen recognized the joke too late, and blushed all the harder at falling for it.

“Oh, _Creators_ , you actually have a pair of silk underthings? Ooooh, I have to see them. You _have_ to show me ma’vhenan,”

“Andraste’s tits, it never ends with you, does it?” he grumbled as her enthusiastic diatribe continued.

“Can’t say that I can comment on that, really.”

He rolled his eyes at her as she led him away from her aravel, back towards the world she had let him leave behind, if only long enough to see her home and hold her close for a little while longer. The armor went back on, they mounted their well-fed horse and hart, and together, began the long ride back to Skyhold, each with a lover’s token and a promise wrapped around their necks. And deep, deep in the forest, where a lone aravel stood, condemned to slowly rot until its owner returned to the Dalish, beneath the curling script that formed Aurum's many names, two simple new carvings: the sigil of the Inquisition, and the head of a lion.

Aurum grinned, and would continue to grin, at the memory of putting those marks there. This was the right thing to do, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All of that fancy new Elvhen/Dalish you see? Yeah, that's all Fenxshiral's (http://archiveofourown.org/users/FenxShiral/pseuds/FenxShiral) work. They're working on this amazing conlang project to construct a full Dalish language from what we are given in the games. Expect to see more of their work popping up in here. I'll do my best to give appropriate translations as needed, since I'm now working outside the canon lexicon. But WOW is their work fantastic. 
> 
> So! For reference to the readers - 
> 
> Ma'vheraan: My Lion  
> Ara sal'shiral: My life/my soul's journey  
> Ma'vhenan: My Heart/the place where my heart is  
> An'daran atish'an: (Formal) Welcome/Greetings  
> Sathan: Please  
> Vera em su tarasyl: Take me to the sky  
> Ma dirtha'vhen'an: My unbreakable vow  
> In future chapters, the translations, when appropriate, will be in parentheticals next to the sentences spoken, for ease of reading.


	31. The Pact

Their ride back to Skyhold was quiet. Both of them were reflecting on the token they now wore, tracing their fingers over it when they thought the other wasn’t looking. To both, what had been given was not nearly of the same worth as what had been received, and were still thinking on what their gift could mean. Aurum did her best not to rub her fingers over the well-worn coin, but its ridges had been smoothed by years of Cullen’s worries, and the feeling of it in her hand was more soothing than she could remember anything else being. Cullen knew that the ring would not fit over his fingers; it was too thin and delicate for any of his digits, but he held his hand over his armor that protected the ring now. He knew the ring was only warmed by his own body’s heat, but it felt so _hot_ on his skin.

He swallowed the words in the back of his throat when he saw Aurum look at him. The sunlight glinted off of her piercings, and he was left breathless all over again. This was _Aurum_ , as she would have been before he knew her. Her vallaslin was gone, yes, as was part of her ear. She bore the scars of the Inquisition, yes, and she had been irrevocably changed from who she had been, but it was not so hard to look at the wild woman beside him and see the Dalish Keeper she would have been.

“Why didn’t you wear your piercings before now?” he asked, breaking their comfortable silence.

“Hmm?”

Aurum turned to look at him, a small smile on her lips.

“Cullen, would you have taken me seriously if I had walked before you, looking like this? Truly, now. Do you think anyone would have? It was easier to pretend to be someone I was not in order to survive. For those first months, I thought of nothing more of how to finish this business so I could return to my clan, and be away from all of the filthy shemlen that suddenly surrounded me. No offense.”

Cullen shrugged. “None taken, Aurum. You have a point.”

She snorted.

“And now, I think if I went back to being myself all the way through, I would end up startling everyone. They’re friends with one part of me, not _this_ part of me,” she said, gesturing to her current attire.

Cullen did his best not to stare, but her thighs were bare and peeking at him from behind sumptuous fabric that he would never have ascribed to belonging to a Dalish mage. He had no idea and could not bear to think, or _not_ to think about what it would be like to just push the taunting fabric the slightest bit more to the side so he could run his fingers along her –

“Cullen, you are staring,” she said, and Cullen blushed.

“I, uh, was just appreciating this part of you.”

Aurum reached down and flipped the tassets she was wearing out to the side, revealing the entirety of her leg, all the way to the hip, to him. Cullen coughed, and nervously looked between her (bare, scarred, muscled, _right there_ ) leg and her face, where Aurum was grinning broadly at him.

“By all means, then, _appreciate_ ma’vheraan,” she purred, running her fingers down her leg.

Cullen swallowed the knot in his throat, biting his lip and trying to remember what it was he was going to say. Because he was certain he had a very clever, suave response to all of this teasing, but he couldn’t, for the life of him, remember what that could be. With another laugh, Aurum brushed her tasset back into place, and shimmied happily in her saddle.

He couldn’t remember hearing her laugh so often before, and it made him smile along with her. Still, part of what she said nagged at him. He wanted to know, he wanted to know all of her, because he…because he wanted to.

“What parts of you have you been hiding, Aurum?”

“You’re uncomfortable, Cullen. It’d be better for you to not know,” she said softly. “I would rather just…not. It was hard enough to get you to let me use the quiet magic to allay your withdrawal symptoms, and it would tax you to be constantly around me. Not to mention my _accent_. Vivienne and Josephine both would have a fit to hear how I usually talk. And…just Dalish things in general. No, most everyone in the Inquisition is comfortable with the Aurum I have been being, and that is fine. I will maintain that.”

She looked away from him, her shoulders slumping ever so slightly.

“I don’t – I didn’t mean that – I don’t want you to…” he said, defeatedly. “Aurum, it’s not like that. I don’t mind the magic. I can…you don’t need to worry about it.”

Aurum sighed, and looked to the sky, but not back to him.

“I must, Cullen. You still think like a Templar around mages, whether you want to admit that or not. If I walked around Skyhold with my magic flowing freely, you and the other Templars would be uncomfortable.”

“No. Show me. Please, Aurum,” he insisted, turning towards her.

He watched her carefully as she weighed his words against whatever scales she held in her mind. Whatever decision she came to, it appeared as if it was in favor of showing him whatever it was that she hid. Aurum rolled her shoulder, and Cullen’s ears popped as the pressure in the air shifted abruptly.

Cullen stared at her, his mouth hanging open. He could _feel_ her presence in the Fade, pressing up against him. The lyrium that remained in his blood, slow to leech out even though he had not tasted it in months, reacted, and he shivered. Every one of his nerves felt like it was on glorious, soul-burning fire. Aurum stared at him, and he felt like he was looking into the heart of a star.

She had been right. He _was_ uncomfortable.

This was the mantle of power she bore, more intimidating than the Anchor in her hand. She carried an authority within her that would have never allowed her to live in a Circle. The Fade danced in the corners of his vision, taunting him with the knowledge that Aurum was so much more than what she had been allowing herself to be, and had been purposeful in her deception. She had hidden this from him for fear of judgment. More importantly, for fear of him and the Inquisition.

“You are already unnerved. And I haven’t even sang yet. This is a bad idea,” she whispered, and all at once, the pressure was gone.

The lack of it made him sag in the saddle, and turn to look at her, a question already on his lips.

“I am not going to sing, Cullen. You were upset enough by this. If I put intention behind it…” Aurum shook her head. “No, it is better to not.”

“What do you mean, sing, though?”

Questions burned his tongue, but he tried to keep them in check instead of letting them out all at once. This was something inherently personal for her, and he knew that he should not press when it was clear that she was uncomfortable with it, but he could not stop them. Not even when she laughed ruefully and shook her head.

“My name…I am a Fade-Singer. _The_ Fade-Singer, as it…If I – Cullen, you don’t understand. Please. Can we talk about something else?” Aurum asked, shrinking away from him, as if she were expecting something awful to happen.

“Aurum, I – I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel like this.”

“You were a Templar, Cullen. Your understanding of what a mage can do begins and ends in the Circle, and you don’t know just what…you don’t _understand_. It is not your fault, but the Order’s. I just – I can’t. Please. I’m not trying to explain away what I am and what I can do, this is just not the right time. You can’t – we’re not even…you’ve not…nevermind.”

He was quiet for a time after that. They rode in silence, with Aurum worrying the reins of her Hart in her fingers, her brows pulled down and mouth set in a thin line. Cullen watched her out of the corner of his eye, trying to find the words that would soothe whatever he had ruffled in her. She was not like the Circle mages he had known – she was not like any other mage he had ever known, not in Kinloch or Kirkwall or anywhere in between. In the Circles, she would have been a pariah, if not killed outright. She would have never survived. Her magic would never have become what it is. She would not be who she was, riding beside him.

Could a Circle Mage ever have hoped to replace Aurum?

“Aurum…can you please – your magic. I want to be used to it.”

She straightened in her saddle, looking at him with surprise.

“What?”

“I want to be used to it. I want to understand how it feels when you are allowed to be you.”

Aurum smiled at him, and he felt her magic again. This time, it was a rolling feeling of joy behind it all. The Fade pressed against him again, and this time, he steeled himself against the momentary feeling of panic that rose in his gut when it touched him. There was a well of power behind Aurum now, and when he grit his teeth against the trained response in him, she reached out to touch his hand.

“I won’t force you to enjoy this, Cullen. I know it is hard for you. You don’t have to-”

“Aurum. No. I can _do_ this. I don’t want to be the Templar to your Mage. I don’t want to be haunted by that.”

She sighed. The presence faded away again, and she shook her head. It was impossible to miss the way she fell into herself. She wanted to have more than this, she wanted to have more from him and he just couldn’t give it to her. Cullen hated that. He hated that he couldn’t even stand to let her be herself around him without withdrawing from her.

“Ma’vheraan, don’t force yourself. Please, it is not worth it to me. I’ve had more than enough time to get used to this. Maybe later.”

Cullen bit his tongue to keep from pressing the issue. Aurum didn’t look back at him, and he let the conversation end where it was. Another time. Later. Promises he hoped he could hold her to, because he had seen her in her glory and now he knew she was holding back because of him. Not just him, but he was a part of it, and that was just not acceptable. There was nothing he could do about it, though.

For a while, they rode in uncomfortable silence. Aurum had her eyes closed, and was swaying in step with her Hart, trying to force herself to relax. It was hard. Her emotions were warring inside of her, filling her mouth with words that she swallowed back down. She wanted two things, simultaneous to each other, and it appeared as if having one would forbid her the other. It was not a comfortable thing, to be a Dalish mage in…a relationship with a shemlen Templar. There was much that was different between the two of them, and the idealization she had built in her mind without realizing it began to crumble.

Maybe they were just…too different. Despite everything else.

Maybe this would not be what she wanted. Maybe he would never be able to want her the way she yearned for him Maybe he and she could never…

Cullen watched her, frowning as he realized just how different Aurum was from the image she portrayed to the Inquisition. All of this time, all this time she had been trying to fit into this narrow mold that they had all but shoved her in to in order to make certain she was safe. She had lost so much of what she had been. Her vallaslin and her tattoos were gone. Her face bore new scars. Her stomach, her torso, and the entire rest of her body did too. Her clan was dead, destroyed at Wycome. Her ears were damaged, her mind was stressed, everything about her was broken or changed, and he could not help but remember the words she had thrown at him in her anger.

She had nothing of what she had left behind before the Conclave. Except for what she wore now, and the bag at her hip. The rest of it was all…the Inquisition. The Inquisition and the Herald. The Inquisition and the Inquisitor. Nothing was hers.

Not even her magic, not truly.

They had all made sacrifices for the Inquisition, they had all made sacrifices in this quest to stop Corypheus, and they had all lost something. But Aurum was the Inquisitor – expected to stand at the front and guide them all through whatever trials they came to, and she was still being asked to put more and more on the line.

The sun caught the coin she wore on the chain hanging from her neck, and he sighed. Her ring – the ring of her _clan_ , a relic from a time long ago – hung from the chain on his neck and absentmindedly, he reached up to press his hand over where it hung. Heat suffused his chest, and he vowed to himself that he would protect her. He would keep her safe, he would make sure of that. He was the Commander of the Inquisition, yes, and she was the Inquisitor, yes. But he was _also_ Cullen, and she was Aurum, and she deserved more than hollow titles.

Skyhold was but a few more miles from them, and then it would be time for them to pretend as if there was nothing between them again. When this was over, when this was finally over – then they could be together. His heart ached at the thought.

“Aurum, I-”

She turned to him, her eyes bright. There was a smile dancing around the corners of her lips, and he reached for her hand. Gently, she nudged her Hart closer to his horse so she could touch her fingers to his. They could not kiss, not while mounted, but that did not stop him from bending low so he could kiss her knuckles.

Aurum blushed, and her smile was broad and genuine.

“Ma’vheraan, I-”

Their moment was interrupted by a crash up the road. Aurum pulled her hand away from Cullen and reached for her staff, magic already dancing at her fingertips to bring to their defense. She nearly dropped her staff when she saw who it was racing down the road towards them.

“Jocasta?” she called out to the onrushing rider.

The oldest of her half-siblings, Jocasta was one she had yet to speak with in anything more than passing, was astride one of Dennet’s prized horses, sword at her hip and a shield on her back. Without even raising a hand in greeting, Jocasta thundered past them both, intent on whatever it was that she was chasing after. Aurum turned in the saddle to watch as Jocasta rapidly vanished over the horizon.

Confused, she looked back to Cullen, who shrugged and shook his head. He didn’t know anything about this, and could not think of what could be happening. Before either of them could actually voice their confusion, however, there was a second commotion from the same part of the road that Jocasta had come from. Lizbeth was running towards them, face flushed and out of breath.

“Aurum! Aurum, they took Sarah!” Lizbeth yelled as soon as she was within earshot.

Aurum jumped down out of her saddle, and stopped her sister’s mad dash. Lizbeth was talking a mile a minute, and trying to catch her breath all at the same time, so the rest of the information she tried to give was lost in a garbled mess.

“What do you mean? Little Pup, calm down and _talk_ to me,” Aurum said, her voice low and soothing.

It was easy to fall into the habitual movements of a Keeper, and easier still to slide deep into the mindset of the wolf. She was a hunter, and she had a pack to protect.

Lizbeth gasped, panted, and after a few moments, had collected herself just long enough to blurt: “They took Sarah as a prisoner, Josephine got the ransom note, Jocasta went to find Da, I started tracking them, and then Jocasta got a horse from somewhere and went to follow them because she heard that they were heading to this tavern not too far away and Jocasta was going to go get Sarah back and I was trying to keep up but Jocasta has a horse!” out before she had to stop to catch her breath again.

Aurum was still for a moment. Just one.

She picked Lizbeth up and set her in the saddle of the Hart, tying her in place with a quick series of knots that only someone standing next to her Hart could undo. Lizbeth squawked and leaned over to try and pick the knots apart, but Aurum smacked her hands away with a low growl.

“Little Pup, go back to Skyhold. My Lion – get her there safely. I hunt with my sister. Go back to the den.”

Cullen stared at Aurum, who waved him away.

“Aurum, let me come with you, you-”

“My Lion, go back to the den. Fetch the pack and send them along the way. Jocasta will return before I do. _I_ hunt.”

She patted him on the thigh, beaming up at him with a smile too-full of teeth. Her magic was rolling through her body, smoke curling through the air as her form changed from elvhen to wolfen.

“Aurum, please-”

“Protect my _family_ , my Lion. Take her to the den.”

“Aurum!”

The great white direwolf leapt away, bounding down the road Jocasta had chosen. Her body was long and lean and powerful, and Cullen watched as long as he could until she too, was out of his range of sight.

“Fecking _Inquisitor_ , running off like that!” Lizbeth groaned, ineffectively trying to urge Aurum’s Hart to follow the wolf, but the huge beast moved only towards Skyhold.

Cullen kept his agreement to the younger girl’s statement to himself, and tried his best to keep his nervousness hidden from her. Aurum was long gone, vanished to do exactly what she had just forbidden him to do. He would get Lizbeth back to Skyhold and then ride out after Aurum. No matter where she had gone, he needed to follow.

* * *

War-Hawk had not gone much further, she found. War-Hawk was armed and smelled like sweat, but no fear. That was good. War-Hawk would need courage if they were going to do this. The scent of those who had took Smallest Pup hung heavy on the air, and War-Hawk was on the right path. That was good. Good instincts, bred truly through the centuries. War-Hawk was a credit to her lineage.

But War-Hawk was still startled when she gave a brief bark of greeting. Aurum was quick to shake her wolf’s skin off when she saw Jocasta ready her sword. Placatingly, she stayed low to the ground, still trying to place herself as _elvhen_ and not _wolf_ before she spoke.

“Easy, sib. I’m shapechanger. I can track Sarah. You can get her back to Skyhold, yes?”

Her voice was rough and heavy with the still-changing vocal chords trying to alternate between who she was and who she could be. Shapechanging was not necessarily _difficult_ , once one knew the trick of it, but it was definitely jarring on the mind, to constantly be alternating between two very different methodologies of communication, not to mention two very different bodies.

“Yes. You are-”

Aurum shook her head, stopping the questions before they could come. She could feel herself slipping back into the more comfortable, more familiar in the moment form of the wolf, and did not necessarily need to stand in the forest to have a conversation about the practical applications of magic as it related to the ability to change ones form from one thing to another, and perhaps more. Shapechanging was a difficult subject for the humans, she knew that, but she was _Dalish_ and this really was not as pressing as the loss of their sister.

“Not important, Jocasta. Our sister needs us. Later. Talk later, War-Hawk. Right now, we hunt.”

She was wolf again, wrapped in the wildness of Thedas, breathing the sounds and smells of the world deep into her very core. She was Wolf. She was Dire Wolf, unmarked and unmade, but still herself at the end of this all. She was who she was meant to be in the moment, and she was _hunting_. Glorious hunt! Hunt for all of the right reasons, fueled by need and desire, yes, but rightful need and just desire. This was the hunt one could sing the Fade into.

War-Hawk put her heel to her mount as she bounded away, and she was careful to follow along, melting into the shadows of the forest to watch the forest itself for dangers. Whenever War-Hawk strayed from the right path, she would guide them back, appearing just long enough to indicate where they should go. Their pace was punishing, but not overwhelming for either of them. They were on a mission. They had a _hunt_ to finish. There was urgency and need to complete this as soon as possible.

The kidnappers were still on the road when she found them. She bolted ahead of War-Hawk, her strides long and powerful, howling loud enough to spook the birds from the trees and catch the kidnappers attention. Before she pounced, there were many. There was very quickly one less.

Her teeth found the neck of the first, severing through the spine with a crunch. War-hawk screamed her defiance, her naked sword taking the head off of the first kidnapper to challenge her. Smallest Pup was crying, and before any of the prey-men could think to hold her truly hostage, she was there, growling, hackles raised and blood dripping from her jaws. Smallest Pup stopped crying and reached for her fur, burying her face in the comforting crook behind her foreleg.

War-Hawk dismounted, called Smallest Pup to her, and when Smallest Pup ran to War-Hawk, she made certain that none of the stunned prey tried to do anything. War-Hawk covered Smallest Pup with the shield, setting her in the front of the saddle. The horse kicked the head in of one of the encroaching prey, and without calling for her, War-Hawk turned heel to the horse and raced out of harm’s way, back to the den.

That left her with prey.

Prey that had encroached on her territory, desecrated her den. Prey that would not see the moon’s rise.

She snarled, and lunged. Blood soaked the earth, and her fur, until she was more red around the muzzle then white. And it was only when the last one fell, his final sound a pitiful whimper that she turned her attention back to the den. It was a long ways away, but there was a deep sense of worry. Instinct was not wrong. Not all of them had come this way. There was another back in the den.

There was someone in her den who did not belong. Someone who intended harm on Smallest Pup and her pack.

Her ears pinned back against her head, and she shook the last of the blood out of her mouth. She had a pack to protect, and her den was not that far away. Ignoring the small, superficial wounds that traced across her shoulders and hindquarters, she took a deep breath in, set her focus on the den, and ran. The sun was sinking low in the sky, painting the cloudless heavens with scarlet hues that matched the blood on her fur.

She saw Lion astride a new horse, charging out to aide her, only to shout and turn his horse and his men around as she bounded past them. The guardsmen at the gates wisely dove out of the way as she lunged through the courtyard. Her pack was there, someone was shouting at her, but she had a hunt to finish, and even as Aurum shed her wolf skin, she was completely focused on her target.

He had chosen to stand close to her family, a guardsman otherwise completely unrecognizable as being out-of-place, but his scent bore the touch of the others, and when she caught his eyes, he flinched.

Guilty prey.

Her mouth was already drenched in blood, and it stuck to her throat, but that did not stop Aurum’s animalistic lunge. Without a knife or any other small weapon on her person, and with the howling of a wolf still just mere moments behind her, there was really only one outcome to this. He did not move fast enough, did not count her a threat fast enough, did not understand that the Dalish was the _Inquisitor_ , and then she was on him.

The heel of her palm hit the underside of his nose before he could draw his blade. His head snapped back and her mouth found his throat with unnerving accuracy. Someone screamed, and she threw him down into the ground. He struggled, she bit through his throat, her hands reaching down to his gut, where she pushed in and clawed **down**. She shook her head back and forth, pulling back, ripping his throat out with her very blunt, very elvhen teeth as her hands made mincemeat of his viscera.

Aurum pulled back when the body stopped twitching, growling lowly and spitting blood and flesh out of her mouth. She was drenched in blood to the elbow, and bright, dripping scarlet traced down the front of her chest. She sat atop her conquered prey, breathing heavily, blinking blood out of her eyes as she tried to recall just who she was again. The hunting song still roared in her ears, drowning out the frantic screams of the weak-hearted, and she stayed very still, her ears flicking back and forth as she calmed herself.

Slowly, she stood up off of her kill, shaking her head again. Slowly, slowly, she fell more like herself, and knew that she had undoubtedly upset more than a few people, and started the walk back to her rooms. She was Dalish, painfully so, in Skyhold. Yes, she had managed to make her first introduction as her real self to her pack and Clan covered in blood.

“Auru!”

Sarah struggled out of her father’s grasp and ran forward, tears streaking her face. Aurum turned and dropped to her knees and held her arms wide for the little one. Sarah ran face-first into Aurum’s side, careful to avoid where the blood was. Aurum wrapped her arms around her, careful to keep her hands off of her, to keep from blood staining the little one.

“Auru! Are you good?”

“Yes, I am, da’len. You are safe."

The little girl nodded, and Aurum pressed a kiss to the crown of her head. Her family, her pack, her Clan. She protected them, she would be their Keeper. Carefully, she ran her fingers over Sarah’s ears leaving bloodied trails across the upper lobe. Lizbeth and Jocasta knelt with her, hugging their youngest sister close, surrounding her with love and safety.

“Ara hallain,” Aurum murmured, pressing another kiss to Sarah’s hair. ( _My baby halla._ )

Sarah hummed, Aurum smiled, and stood up. Jocasta and Lizbeth stayed with Sarah, reassuring their littlest sister that she was good and nothing bad was going to happen. Dorian was at her elbow, his mouth drawn down into a frown, and he opened his mouth to scold her, or something, but Aurum reached out with a bloodied hand, brushed her thumb along the upper lobe of his ear. As she had done when the desire demon had plagued her nightmares, she bent down to press her forehead to his cheek. Unconsciously, he turned into the pressure, returning the intimate gesture as he had done the first time.

“Lethal’lan, tuelanen i’na.” ( _Kin's blood/clanmate, Creators be with you._ )

He stilled, knowing better than to pull away, but his objections had faded away. Now he, and the others gathered, were just _confused_. Aurum had been seen blood-covered before, but now she was covered in blood, dripping it all over the stones of Skyhold, dressed as the Dalish did, with a face full of piercings and the air around her humming with power.

“Aurum?” Dorian’s voice was smaller than normal, touched with confusion.

“You are my First, Dorian. Walk with me. I must teach you. I will talk with the others later. The danger is gone, my Clan is safe. Now you must learn.”

He nodded along, and followed behind her as she walked towards her rooms. The others gathered stared in fear, and awe, as she walked, and Dorian walked alongside of her. No one raised their voice to call to her. Skyhold was quiet, and she walked, barefoot, her head bowed next to Dorian’s, her voice low.


	32. The Test

Skyhold was hushed around her. Aurum could feel eyes upon her. It had been this way since she had killed those who had threatened her family a week ago. Skyhold waited for her next move, and she had made many behind the scenes. Leliana was searching out those who had dared to attempt to kidnap a member of the Inquisitor’s family, and their reasons behind it. Aurum suspected the Red Templars, suspected Corypheus, or someone attempting to curry favor with the ancient magister.

Those who had learned fear that day, however, gave her a wide berth. Guardsmen who had, perhaps, been approached about what had been planned avoided her eyes, and even some of the innocents suddenly found themselves staring overlong at her mouth or hands. Wonder danced in the eyes of some, who looked upon her with awe. She was made more to some, and made less by others, but she was still Aurum and she walked with _power_.

Aurum had purposefully forgone more of the act she had been presenting for a long while, insisting upon her right to walk barefooted through her home, through her territory, insisting again that she would not take all of her piercings out in order to be palatable to the Orlesian dignitaries. The tongue stud remained. She agreed the lip rings were overkill. But she still wore more jewelry than she had done in previous month, daring anyone to comment on it.

(Josephine was shocked when the Free Marcher officials warmed immensely to Aurum, making concessions en masse that she would have never thought to have asked – Aurum was Marcher, as they were, and now she looked it. The Marches stood with the Inquisition, which is more than Josephine could ever have hoped for, and more solidarity than the City-States had ever shown.)

She stood proudly at the War Table, head high and undeniably Dalish, and spoke with a calm air of command that had them all finding fewer and fewer reasons to argue with her. She clearly elucidated why her decisions were being made, and addressed the fact that while all of her advisors may not necessarily agree with what was being done, that she had made her decision.

Aurum moved with power, not doing anything to disguise her strength, in both movement and body. She had taken to usurping the practice ring in the early mornings to move through her stretching forms. The first few days, she had gathered quite the crowd of confused and awed soldiers, as she bent and twisted around, using her body as a resistance point and weight. Balanced delicately atop one of the posts that formed the ring, Aurum would practice her fighting forms, forcing herself into using the smallest, most precise steps, lest she fall and make a fool of herself.

Soon enough she had gathered a constant group of five or so mages who had wanted to learn what she was doing. She never allowed any Templar or soldier who had no mage-talent to practice with them, insisting that this was a Dalish custom for the mages alone. By the next week, the five mages had ballooned to fifteen, and they took the courtyard every morning to practice. At first, the human and few Tal-Vashoth Qunari mages that the Inquisition had attracted had been hesitant to join, seeing Aurum surrounded by other elvhen mages, but she had insisted that anyone interested join her.

They were her clan, after all.

And no mage should ever be made to feel as if they had no right to defend themselves, just because they were connected more intrinsically to the Fade than any other. She led them all, smiling and assisting as best she could. There was a joy in her heart that none could take away, and on the mornings Vivienne came by, she ensured that the Grand Enchanter was treated as any other. Aurum was the only expert in this – none of the other Dalish present had progressed far enough in their own training in-Clan to do what she did.

The familiarity of the movements and moments satisfied a deep part of Aurum, and she gentled herself to the Circle Mages, soothing their worries and aches about not being as skilled as she, despite, in many cases, being her senior. Aurum had a wildness in her blood, a centuries-born lineage in her eyes, and she knew that they did too. It had, as she told them, merely been buried beneath the training of a Circle.

They could be more than what they were. They could always improve. They were more than what they had been made to be by the oppression of a Circle.

(Vivienne tried, just the once, to ask Aurum to curtail her outrageously anti-Circle rhetoric, and it was perhaps the only time the Grand Enchanter would admit to recoiling away from someone – Aurum had leveled her with a stare so cold that Vivienne thought she may have actually cast a _spell_ with her gaze alone. But that was ridiculous.)

(Others had tried as well, but Aurum had laughed in their faces. There were no Circles, and there never would be again.)

Dorian, she found, was an excellent student. He came to her morning training sessions, and while she never tried to make it appear as if she was giving him more attention and tutelage as they moved through the forms, she definitely demanded more from him. He would make the occasionally amusing comment about the names the Dalish had for these mage-forms, and Aurum would laugh, and shake her head. The clever ones of her students soon realized that these were not mere morning stretches, or a morning workout for those who could not sleep soundly through the night. These were fighting forms, and they were growing stronger.

Dorian was definitely clever, and the next time she and he went out into the great wide world beyond Skyhold, she was so _proud_ to see him fall into the now-familiar forms, fighting alongside her with all the grace and poise a First would be expected to have.

It was time.

* * *

The morning she chose for his final test came quickly after that foray out into Thedas. Aurum had spent hours on the preparations that were needed in case Dorian passed this test. She had let the others who had gathered for their now-common morning meetings that they had the day off. She had other business to tend to, and that business was precisely what she was going to work on. Dorian had but a few bad habits remaining, and his song had not been fully realized.

Aurum may be the only Fade-Singer in Thedas, but no one would accept Dorian as her First. He was not of the People. But there was a way. An old way. He could belong to her bloodline, to the flesh of the People. But she had to break him of his Circle magic. The Circles had been Broken in name, but not in truth. The Circle still encircled his magic, muffling it with the lies of the Chantry. He needed to be broken of those shackles.

Aurum only hoped it would not kill him.

She stood, at rest, in the center of the courtyard where they would usually practice. Head bowed, eyes closed, she prepared herself. She had forgone the use of her staff. For her sake and Dorian’s both, it was best if she was unarmed, but she had made certain that Dorian’s favored weapon was within easy distance of where they were set to spar. He did not know what was going to happen, and it was an _ambush_ that she was setting up for the one she wanted to count as her First and the next step in her lineage.

She was not so cruel as to make it impossible for him to walk away from this.

Aurum was, however, cruel enough to not respond to him when he showed up.

“Aurum, what is this?”

She rolled her shoulder, and let her magic roar. Dorian flinched, unused to the sensation. She had never unfettered her magic like this, not in Skyhold at least. And she had never directed the force of it at him. He took an uneasy step back, looking for what could have caused her to react like this.

There was nothing. Just the two of them, and a gaggle of spectators. Iron Bull’s Dalish had made an uncommon appearance, leaning on her “bow” and watching intently. Aurum had asked her to be present, to witness what was going to happen. Aurum was thankful for her presence. This was going to be hard on her heart, she knew that. As dangerous as it was for Dorian, it was just as dangerous for her. But she was strong.

He would learn to be too.

“Aurum?” Dorian asked, taking a step back.

“Ready yourself, Dorian.”

“What?”

“Ready yourself, _Pavus_ ,” she sneered. “Someone like you must learn.”

He stared at her, affronted, and trying to find the words to put his thoughts into. He could not tell if she was serious or not.

Dorian got his answer when Aurum stepped towards him, pulling fire out of the air around her and throwing it at him. Without her staff, anyone would assume that her ability to be a powerful offensive force would be hamstrung. Anyone who had never tried to fight a Dalish mage at a disadvantage, at least, would have assumed that. And the few who would have known better were more than likely dead.

Because Aurum was just as deadly without a staff. Perhaps, even, moreso than usual. Too much of the world had grown accustomed to mages only being able to fight when equipped with a staff. Too many of them thought that taking the staff away from a mage would render them neutered in battle. Too many thought that a mage without a staff was like a soldier without a sword. Too many made mockery of a mage’s weakness without the advantage of their weapons. Dorian had been taught much the same by his own Circle, as had every other Circle mage, be it in the Black Circle of Tevinter, or the “true” Circle of Ferelden and Orlais.

He looked at her without his staff and made a judgment he should not have. She would break him of that.

The first time she knocked him flat on his ass, he laughed, and scrambled back to his feet. The next time she knocked him to the ground, she did not pull the strike. She broke his nose with a savage punch, before she threw lightning down to shatter his barrier. Dorian was stunned, and almost a second too late on his second barrier when she threw ice down where his face had been. If he hadn’t moved, it would have been a deadly blow.

Spitting curses, Dorian put space between the two of them, rolling back up to his feet and glaring at her. He opened his mouth to object, to tell her off, to make her _stop_ , but Aurum was still on the offensive, and he was forced backwards, away from her. She never stopped her brutal forward assault, driving him back. The snarl never left her lips and it very soon dawned on Dorian that she was serious. Aurum was deadly serious, and her ire was directed solely at him.

“What is this _about_ , Aurum?!” he panted, blocking her next barrage with a barrier that shattered almost immediately.

Her only response was a flick of her left ear. Dalish, to their right, laughed, understanding what Aurum meant in the instinctive way elvhen often communicated with each other, and Aurum shook her head. Until Dorian _understood_ , until Dorian stopped singing the song of another and found the threads of his song and started singing _that_ , she would not stop. She would not stop until he broke free.

Or he died.

The air around them both snapped with the ethereal forces that both commanded. Aurum would never relent. She pushed every button he had, demonstrated every flaw in his defense, broke through every barrier, and never pulled her strike. If Dorian was anything less than perfect with his reactions, he felt the burn of fire, the crack of lightning, the crunch of frost. He had to struggle to match her, leaning hard on the training of the Circle to find his footing.

So she swept his feet out from under him.

Dorian cursed prolifically in Tevene and threw a sloppy slash at her gut with the bladed end of his staff. Her ears twitched nearly too fast to see, and she withdrew from her attacks. Dorian took the momentary respite to catch his breath and curse her anew. Blood seeped from a dozen wounds across his body, and he had to concentrate hard to stay on his feet. Aurum saw all of this, and her heart ached. He must be broken of what bound him, but the pain he felt was her pain as well.

For a moment, she had heard him. Not long enough for him to truly be broken, but there were cracks beginning to show. He had reacted instinctively, based solely on how he knew his magic to work, not how he had been told to work his magic, and that was what she was looking for. She needed for him to be _him_ , so that he could belong to her Clan in truth.

Aurum needed to needle him further and work that hairline fracture into a true shattering point.

She waited for him to find his center again, waited for him to look at her with fury and anger before pressing her attack. Aurum spun her magic in tight, vicious circles around her, daring Dorian to come closer, daring him to try and assault her. With a curl of his lip, he began his assault, doing his level best to maim her as she was doing the same to him.

The gathered observers gasped as the two mages began to truly duel. Dorian forced fear at her with a scream, and Aurum bit her cheek until it bled to keep from bolting. That spell was certainly a specialty of his. If Dorian had been holding back before, out of respect and confusion, he certainly was doing no such thing any longer. He threw the full brunt of his power at her, and she defended herself.

The two of them worked well together in the field, and were more than used to the way the other fought, but Aurum had an advantage over Dorian – she could hear his magic, and he was a _Circle_ mage. His magic sang of what it was going to do before he did it. It was the reason she could not bear to have him carry on as he was doing. He would get himself killed by the first Dalish challenger to his position, and she would not – could not allow that. He had to break out of the habit.

So she pushed back.

She did not have her lazurite hilt, so she could not pull a sword from nothing, but that did not stop her from forcing him into hand to hand combat. He defended with his staff, and raised more than just a few bruises on Aurum’s skin. She growled at the impacts, snapping her teeth in impatience.

Dorian echoed her sharp growl with one of his own, and Aurum heard more than just that snarl. Startled, she was slow to react, and his next attack caught her squarely off guard. Aurum was thrown backwards, away from him, and she landed hard on her side. She rolled in the dirt until she found her footing again.

This time, this time though, his song did not fall back to the one taught to him by the Circle. This time, Dorian’s magic _sang_. He forced his song into their fight, spinning his anger into the song he should have been singing all along. Aurum laughed, and danced to his song. She abandoned her own song and sang his back to him, and soon enough the fight was no longer. Dorian’s anger still blistered beneath his skin, but his magic danced in time with their movements.

Aurum’s bare feet raised small clouds of dust, and her laughter was bell-bright in the courtyard. The watchers were mystified, as she went from honestly trying to kill Dorian to playfully darting around him, goading him into ceasing their fight, reaching out to pull his hands off his staff. Dorian refused at first, and Aurum shook her head at him. His song was still humming in the air around him, and she needed to make certain that he felt it. She could not sing it as he did, but she could ensure that he heard it.

“Aurum, what the _hells_ are you-”

She brushed her mouth across his, letting his song dance across her lips for a brief moment. Dorian froze, stopping dead in his tracks.

When she smiled, she took the moment to click her lazurite stud against her teeth. Dorian stared at her, trying to decide what he should be feeling in that moment. He was panting hard, trying to catch his breath and blink the black spots of overexertion out of his eyes.

“Alright. To the beginning, Aurum. What was that?”

“Needed you to stop being a Circle mage. You are my _First_ Dorian, and you will _never_ sing a song other than the one in your heart ever again. Do you understand?”

He took a step back, shocked at her vehemence. Aurum grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him back, a small sneer on her face.

“No, Dorian, you are not listening. You will _never_ sing the song of a Circle. You are Dorian. Once of House Pavus. You are Dorian of Tarasyl’an Te’las. You are my Clan, my First, my family, and I will not let your actions be dictated by the Circle. You are more than that. The Circle within must remain broken.”

Dorian blinked.

“I…see.”

“No, you don’t. But you will learn. Come now, this way. There is still something else to do.”

He stared, even as she started walking away. Aurum ignored the collected audience, gesturing for Dorian to follow her. Of course he did, regardless of what had just happened. He was hopelessly intrigued, and entranced by whatever it was that had just occurred. She had fought, and he had fought back, but it had been more than just that. It had been more and he had passed whatever test it had been.

Dorian would be lying if he said that he had not felt a surge of pride at her claiming of him. She called him her First, and he knew enough of her culture to know that she meant it in a way that was more familiar than merely friendly. Aurum claimed him as First, and that _meant_ something. So he followed behind her, jogging to keep pace with her. He swiped a healing spell at his nose, grunting as his half-clotted blood suddenly was given free space to gush out of his face. He leaned forward quickly, trying to catch the blood before it stained his clothing any further.

Aurum stopped, turned, and clucked her tongue at him. Her magic washed over him, soothing the residual ache. She rolled her eyes at him and nodded towards an unused side door into the cellars beneath Skyhold.

“You have much to learn, Dorian. I think we’ll end up starting with healing spells after you learn the Tongue.”


	33. The Bond

He huffed and followed behind her, deep into the underbelly of Skyhold. This was an old Elvhen sanctuary, and Aurum had ordered the ruins that the shemlen fort had been built atop of be excavated. It had surprised many people to find the catacombs still untouched under a few feet of loose stone.

This was where she guided Dorian to, walking down and down and down, using veilfire to light their way. The air was heavy and wet with the taste of earth. Dorian said nothing. It was as if the presence of Skyhold above them squashed all presence of mind to speak. Aurum knew where they were heading, without needing any sort of guidance. Dorian was careful to stick close to her, not wanting to lose her in the labyrinthine pathways beneath Skyhold.

The ceiling dropped low, and then opened wide overhead, over an underground pool. A table sat beside it, bearing only a simple silver dagger. Dorian, familiar with the ways of Tevinter drew back, old memories rising in the back of his mind. Aurum had never struck him as the sort of mage to dally in blood magic, but he had been wrong about her before. He didn’t want to be trapped into something terrible.

Aurum shocked him again when she started stripping out of her clothing.

“Aurum?!”

“You must learn, Dorian. That starts with learning how to cleanse yourself. Strip and come into the pool. The water is warm.”

Nudity did not seem to bother her and she waded into the water. Dorian hesitated for only a moment, but followed behind soon after. It was a nice experience, to get clean. Aurum gave him plenty of space, walking him through the ritual steps the Dalish used to purify their bodies. They were a nomadic people, so much of their ritual was focused on being tailored to the area they were living in at that moment.

She simply scrubbed the dirt and blood off of her body, humming the words to a Dalish song beneath her breath.

“I don’t see how this is different from any other bath, dear. Other than the fact that I’m sharing it with a woman, of course.”

Aurum rolled her eyes and splashed him.

“Focus on cleansing yourself, Dorian. It is a meditative action. Just…clear your mind and heart and magic of what is weighing on you.”

He shook his head, splashed her back, but quietly went to do as she told him to do.

* * *

“So then, what is the knife for?”

She had fresh robes for both of them. Simple Dalish things, unornamented and loose. Dorian had agreed to put his on only because there was no one else who would see him in the horrid thing. They were kneeling on opposite sides of the table, and Aurum had the silver knife in her hand, her robe loosely tied only to keep from being too improper. Dorian was still leery, remembering home and everything that he had left behind when he had abandoned Tevinter.

“Clan Lavellan was one of the Last Noble Houses of Elvhenan. A line unbroken back to the time when the Creators walked with us.”

Dorian frowned.

“I am not one to challenge your history, Aurum, but that seems unlikely.”

Aurum huffed at him, rapping him on his recently-healed nose with a knuckle.

“Hush, da’isenatha, little dragon. Story now, inane Tevinter prattling later.”

Dorian grumbled, but quieted. He was very accustomed to questioning his teachers at every available opportunity, which seemed to be anathema to how Aurum wished for him to learn. He would save his questions for later, then. If he _must_.

“Our Gift has passed, from Keeper to First, since those first dark days. Clan Lavellan’s history is long and storied, and a tale for another day. The Most Noble House Lavellan lives now only in me. I am the last of the Flesh. And so, I share Flesh with you.”

She held her left palm up, the one that glowed ever faintly with the Anchor’s light whenever there was magic nearby. Quickly, carefully, with an ease that suggested practice, she carved a neat, shallow circle of flesh out of the meat of the heel of her palm. Dorian sucked in breath sharply through his teeth, staring at her now-bleeding hand, and then to the piece of her flesh balancing on the tip of her blade.

“Would you accept, and be counted amongst the Noble Line? Lavellan is no more, and Tarasyl’an Te’las rises in its place. I would count you as I count my own flesh and blood, if you are willing to...partake.”

“This _is_ cannibalism, dear Dalish.”

Aurum shrugged, nonplussed by the correct identification of what she was asking of him.

“No worse than any other blood magic, Tevinter. And you do not have to do this. It is a choice.”

“You do raise an interesting point. And a correct one. I do have a choice.”

He reached for the flesh on the tip of the knife. Aurum had to be very careful from breaking the visage of a Keeper in that moment. She would have a First. Truthfully. No other Clan would be able to claim that Dorian was unfit to be her First. No one could claim Lavellan from them – from _her_. Lavellan lived. The Flesh persisted. The magic was passed on.

“I give you the Flesh of the Spirit of Lavellan, of Tarasyl’an Te’las, Dorian of Pavus, of Tarasyl’an Te’las,” Aurum said softly, watching Dorian carefully as he ate part of her.

She could feel the piece of her magic leave with her flesh. Aurum carefully switched the knife to her other hand and carved a matching circle out of her right hand, and offered that to him as well. That took care of the first bond. They were linked, but only once, in Spirit. The first of her magic to materialize, and the first given to another. Each form of magic she possessed, she would have to give, but the less inherent ability she had with it, the more of her flesh she must give over in sacrifice. Even if he and she were to stop now, the bond in Spirit would exist, and they would be bound together. Not as strong as they could be, but they would be. But Dorian did not seem too bothered and gestured for her to continue as the second piece of her vanished into him.

“I give you the Flesh of the Frost of Lavellan, Dorian of Pavus,” she said, pulling her robe to the side and taking no time at all to carve two matching elongated diamonds out of her flesh, just above each of her kneecaps.

Dorian took those pieces of her as well, without fuss this time. If he was a mage of any note, and she knew he was, he would have already begun to feel the way her magic touched the air around her. The magic of Lavellan, passed through centuries, cultured in bloodlines and rituals was being passed to a Tevinter Altus by the last of the Most Noble Line. It was a moment to behold, and one that should never be beheld. Blood magic in Skyhold.

Oh, if anyone else found out there would be a riot.

“I give you the Flesh of the Storm of Lavellan, of Tarasyl’an Te’las, Dorian of Pavus, of Tarasyl’an Te’las.”

Her knife danced across the skin over her ribs, just beneath her breasts. Long, but thin and shallow, she carved into herself, removing a nearly four-inch long strip of her flesh on each side before presenting them both to Dorian on the blade of the knife. He took them, blinking rapidly to clear the magic out of his eyes. Dorian was a burning bright spear in her mind now, which was fitting –

“I give you the Flesh of the Fire of Lavellan, of Tarasyl’an Te’las, Dorian of Pavus, of Tarasyl’an Te’las.”

The knife’s tip came to her throat, where she carved a matched set of elongated crescent shapes. The outer edge of the crescent brushed her collarbones, and the cup of the crescent opened inwards, towards her throat. She elongated tails of crescents up to her jaw. There would be no way to hide the scars, but she did not want to. They were proof of something profound, and she wanted them to remain as they were. Blood soaked her robes, but that was their purpose. She could heal herself after they had been bound together, and then wear her new scars with pride.

Dorian took the last two pieces with some trepidation, looking to her neck to make certain that she had not inadvertently started to bleed out down here in the dark. Once he was convinced that she was not going to keel over and die on him (he wouldn’t make it out of Skyhold alive, that was for certain – this was _blood magic_ and he was _Tevinter_ ), he ate the last two pieces of her.

Aurum felt her magic in him, and beamed. Bloodied and all at once exhausted, she made a movement to stand from the table and bathe herself again, but Dorian’s hand on her wrist stopped her.

“You may find yourself in Tevinter one day, Aurum. I would hate for you to…not belong. The knife, please.”

She paused, but gave the blade to him, as he asked. Dorian hummed something in Tevene that she could not translate fast enough to understand, and rolled the right sleeve of his robe up over his elbow. When he cut his arm, it was definitely with the languid ease of one used to such an action in magical context, and Aurum was more than surprised at that.

“I thought-”

“Blood magic is, in fact, rote in Tevinter, my Lady Dalish. I wouldn’t dare of offending your, well…I suppose _our_ culture, now, by doing something I do not know the meaning of, but in Tevinter we do have non-magical ways of introducing someone into our lineage. Your arm, please.”

Aurum was quick to pull her right sleeve up as he had done, and held her arm out over their blood-soaked table. She was still bleeding from her ritual prior to this, and exhaustion dogged her now that she was not _doing_ something. Carefully, he reached to open a cut just above the joint of her elbow, as he had done on himself.

He took her hand in his, and let their blood run down their arms to intermingle where their hands were joined. Dorian waited for the blood to mix, then dabbed the fingers of his free hand against where their blood mingled. Reverently, he touched his bloodied fingertips to her lips, painting her mouth with their blood. She could feel the tingle of his magic against her mouth, and when he reached to press those same fingers against the cut on her arm, she felt the tingle explode into a nearly-painful spark of connection.

He gestured for her to repeat his actions and she did so, dipping her fingers with their combined blood, and then brushing them across his lips before letting their mingled blood come in contact with his own ritual cut. Dorian’s arm tensed for a moment, and his grip on her hand tightened, but then that moment was gone, and it was just the two of them, kneeling at a table in darkness only brightened by veilfire, covered in blood.

“Aurum Lavellan Tarasyl’an Te’las, you are of Pavus now as well. I am of you, you are of me. Na via lerno victoria, ast manaveris victorius. Sister,” he paused, for dramatic effect, winking at Aurum before continuing. “Festis bei umo canavarum.”

Aurum laughed and let go of his blood-slicked hand as he released hers. She shook droplets of blood away from her hand and with a quick wave of magic (and the last magic she had in her reserves after that fight), she healed her wounds. Not cleanly, as that was neither the point, nor something she could manage in her state. No, she left her new scars, pale and milk-white as her tattoos had once been raised up out of her skin, and knew that she would never let herself lose them. Even if time made them fade, she knew that what she had done would not.

“Lethal’lin, eolas’esayelan’ara, nuva tarasyldhe re uth’su mar’veth. Blood-brother, my First, may the wind be at your back. We should head up before Cullen comes searching, though.”

It was hard to get up, and harder still to look at her sweat and dirt-slicked clothes and know she had to get dressed in them once again.

In concert, Aurum and Dorian both made a disgusted “ugh” beneath their breaths before breaking out into laughter.

“You really are my sister, I suppose. Perhaps I could convince you into some eyeliner and a proper hair style,” Dorian groused good-naturedly as he redressed himself.

Aurum took a moment to consider and found the idea not as outlandishly unlikeable as it had been all the other times Dorian had made an effort to improve her fashion sense. She knew it was because their new bond worked both ways, she knew it was because he made her family that this was happening. But her heart was too full of joy to care. It was a bond they shared, one of family in flesh and blood, and if nothing else went right in her life, she had a new brother now.

“Perhaps I could be convinced of kohl and some assistance with my hair. Perhaps you should consider some proper piercings and tattoos.”

He paused this time, halfway buckled into the ridiculous number of belts and shiny baubles he insisted upon wearing. She watched as a look of consideration crossed his face, and then he nodded.

“Perhaps. I would look dashing with a few tattoos, I think. Bull has been needling me about letting Krem tattoo me like he tattooed Bull, and, well, it hardly seems a bad idea, now that you mention it.”

Aurum rather thought she wouldn’t mention the way she felt her chest warm at Dorian’s mention of Bull. That was the bond and its newness, she knew, but that didn’t stop her from grinning wickedly at Dorian. The fact that Krem was apparently a skilled enough tattooist on top of his other miscellaneous skills meant that Aurum might need to pay a visit to Krem sometime soon. Bareskin had never suited her, not really. Tattoos would be nice, after all this time running around with nothing but scars where there had once been stories.

She cleaned as much blood as possible off of her skin, vowing to go bathe as soon as there was a good moment to do so. There was still much to do with her day, and she did not necessarily need to stain the inside of another set of clothing with blood.

But, for now, she could enjoy the closeness with her new brother and First as they walked along the ancient passageways back towards the sun. He offered her his arm, and she took it, walking gracefully beside him, their heads bowed together in hushed conversation even as they stepped back out into the bright sun. Together, they walked to the Tavern, not to bother Bull or Krem, even though both offered warm greetings, but to find a place for both of them to sit and rest on the second floor, away from most of the other patrons.

The bond was new, and it felt odd to consider being away from the other. Aurum assured Dorian it would fade shortly, but still did not move her hand from his arm. Bull’s Dalish beamed at them, coming by only the once to lay her hand atop them both and formally welcome them as First and Keeper to the Tavern. Aurum responded in kind, introducing Dorian as her First for the first time, and Dorian beamed, even though Aurum was certain he had not understood all the words.

It was…nice.

They had family. Both by blood and bond, they had family in each other. And nothing could ever take them apart. Dorian had a sister for the first time in his life, and Aurum had a First and a Brother and a Clansmate.

She felt confident in considering this the best day in a long, long while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations: 
> 
> "Na via lerno victoria, ast manaveris victorius": Only the living know victory, but long live the victors.  
> "Festis bei umo canavarum" : You will be the death of me.
> 
> As before, the Elvhen in here is from FenxShiral's Project Elvhen. Mad props to them for their amazing work.


	34. The Game

Varric was finally getting his game of Wicked Grace.

After their excursion out into the Hinterlands (where Bianca was met, handled, and properly threatened away from causing Varric any further harm), Aurum figured this evening was as good as any other for that game she had promised the dwarf long ago. Wicked Grace was not, technically, her game, but she did not necessarily have the time to teach everyone how to play the traditional Dalish gambling games, so she supposed she could put up with losing a couple dozen sovereigns in a game amongst friends.

By the time she and Varric had wandered into the emptied Tavern, it seemed all the other players had assembled. Varric had come out only to look for her.

Alright, perhaps Aurum had been stalling up in her room, reading over last minute books and pamphlets about typical Wicked Grace games and the rules and the ways to cheat. She was nervous. She wanted to make this work, and she wanted to not be a huge embarrassment at this confusing event. So when Josephine greeted her with a “I don’t remember the rules”, Aurum was careful to note that Josephine was an Ambassador and by no means would Josephine not know how to play Wicked Grace or remember how to play.

Aurum took her spot in between Josephine and Cassandra, and carefully looked at her cards. Everyone got their pre-round snark out of the way, which left Josephine starting the game. Aurum begged leniency, with hopefully some more grace and tact than Josephine’s own begging. The game began, escalating immediately to silvers instead of coppers.

Aurum did her best to keep her focus on the cards, but then the beer started flowing and tales started spilling, and it soon became very obvious to her that there was no way for her to be good at this game, and drink, and share stories of her childhood, without losing some of her money to Josephine, who was slyly raking in the coins.

So she surrendered to the loss, laughing and sharing stories as one did in a game of cards, urging each of her companions to give one in exchange for her own, until they had heart all about Chateau Haine and Cullen’s Templar friend who had wandered out in his smalls.

Oh, it only devolved from there.

She laughed around the start to her story, waving Dorian off when he tried to intervene.

“No, no! I can finish it. So, like I said. These other Clan-Firsts had met me at Arlathvhen – and decided that if I wasn’t going to take a shine to any of them, they were going to try and terrorize me. Well, by then I had already taken my tael’dir’vhen’an – my second oath – and I had gained my skins. I heard them coming from _miles_ off, and decided to play a little trick on them.”

She had to pause to take a finishing swig of her beer and gesture for her tankard to be filled again.

“These da’ishan – these little boys, they still were afraid of Fen’Harel, and I had withdrawn into one of His old sacred groves. They came looking for a game, and forgot themselves almost immediately. There was a hotspring, and they were from some of the lowland clans. They stripped down and jumped in, apparently forgetting that they were looking for me. Oh you should have _seen_ the looks on their faces when I came up behind them and **howled**. I swear, some of them walked on water to get away!”

Aurum stopped again to laugh with everyone else, but shook her head, waving them off. She still had to finish the story. Dorian was watching her intently, beaming and, unbeknownst to her, waiting for the moment when his little deception came to fruition. Varric, too, was watching carefully, careful to keep Aurum and Cullen’s tankards from emptying quite as fast as they were drinking. The serving girl was sneaky, and effective, slipping additional sips of beer into each tankard in turn, carefully pushing the both of them into the realm of loose lips and looser inhibitions.

“I’m not done, believe it or not! See, they apparently thought I was actually an incarnation of Fen’Harel and that He was giving chase. Never came back for their clothes! Or, more importantly, their smalls. I, however, gained three lovely new small-sails for my aravel and proudly raced past them the next day. Creators you should have _seen_ their fuckin’ _faces_. I think their Keepers ended up beating their ears red over the whole thing. Deshanna managed to get us _quite_ the favorable benefit from their Clans. It was, ah, indescribable.”

Aurum was beset with the giggles at the memory. Deshanna had nearly striped the skin from her own ears as well, but that was beside the point. It was a hilarious memory, even years after the fact, and –

_Oh Creators that was how Cullen sounded when he laughed?_

He had made this snorting giggle at the end of her story, covering his face with one hand to try and hide how funny he found the situation. Aurum stared, bright-eyed and entranced, perhaps for a heartbeat too long before she tore her eyes away and went back to her cards. Josephine was still raking in the coins, and while Aurum wasn’t doing bad, she knew that after one ran out of coins, one could be asked to bet…other things. She was not yet drunk enough to consider it, but oh, it was a little warm…wasn’t it?

Cullen challenged Josephine with a confidence that Aurum could only assume was alcohol-based, and when the armor started coming off and mockingly being placed behind Josephine as “insurance” for Cullen to pay his debts, Aurum started losing track of just what she was doing because heh, oh _wow_.

She had seen him shirtless before. A few times, actually. But it was in a different context now and there was so much _muscle_ and, yes, that _was_ the fading imprint of _her_ mouth hiding ineffectively on his collarbone. Aurum licked her teeth and tried to pay attention to her cards. Hells, she was doing a decent job of it, and joining in on ribbing Cullen every time he would get overconfident and overbet again was a great way to bond with everyone else around her.

What came _next_ however, drastically changed the mood of the evening. Cullen, blushing scarlet as Varric needled him about that particular bruise on his collarbone, glared at her when she poorly hid her snort of laughter in her mug of beer.

Aurum was in the middle of announcing her bet when she heard it – from the mouth of _Cullen_.

“Lasa ar’an alas’nira aron fen’en, Aurum.” ( _Let us dance as the wolves do._ )

His tongue made neat butchery and hardened consonants uneededly, but she understood. Aurum understood exactly what he had just said to her and nearly choked on her beer.

The first emotion she felt was shock. Right afterwards came a heady flush of arousal that had her blushing straight to the very tips of her ears. She stared, mug still lifted to her lips, brows high on her forhead and eyes wide with surprise, at Cullen, who smirked lazily at her. The scar on his lip crinkled with the movement and Aurum was suddenly very glad she was still seated because her knees had turned to water.

She swallowed her nervousness and thanked the Creators that it seemed no one else had caught onto Cullen speaking Dalish. She lost the next hand, regardless, her mind firmly focused on the fact that Cullen had learned Dalish dirty-talk from someon-

“ _Dorian Pavus_ ,” she hissed, whipping her head to her First.

Apparently he had been expecting her piecing it together and gave her a slightly lopsided little grin. The **moment** she was done with this and sober enough to work a proper spell she was going to light his stupid fucking moustache on fucking fire. Because that was playing dirty. Aurum was willing to bet the few silvers she had left that Cullen didn’t actually know what the hells he was saying to her, but just repeating phrases to her that Dorian had assured him were very romantic.

Dorian merely shrugged off her concern with a grin. Aurum narrowed her eyes, damning her tongue’s inability to slur Tevene. The next hand was a loss as well, but that was because she was busy trying to figure out how to get back at Dorian when –

“Sathan, ava ‘ma edhis.” ( _Please, suck my dick_ ,)

Aurum flinched, looking at Cullen with her mouth agape. The first phrase she could forgive, because outside of the Dalish clans, it was a pretty innocuous turn of phrase. It was an idiom, nothing more. That last – he had just – _out loud_. Dorian laughed and lost his bet, turning his coins over to Josephine without the slightest bit of chagrin.

Well if he wanted to play that game then, Aurum would use his new near-fluency in Dalish against him. Aurum kept a careful eye on Dorian, waiting for the next moment he would take a sip of his wine (and winning some of her coin back), and when he lifted his glass, she looked at Cullen. Without flinching this time, and with a stare that smoldered with intensity, she smiled beguiling at Cullen.

“Pala ma ara’br’av sule ir rosas’da’din, em avan ma mahnnar, Cullen, ma’vheraan.” ( _Fuck my throat until you cum so much that I can taste you into next year.)_

Dorian spat his wine clear across the table and hastily made an effort to cover the fact that he had just done that. Aurum stared serenely down at her cards, a small smile playing on her lips. Two could very well play at this game, and Aurum doubted Dorian had taught Cullen more than a handful of crass phrases.

“Nuvenan ara’len’pala, i ethan mar’av’in i’ara’da’vin, Aurum.” ( _I want to masturbate and cover your face with my cum._ )

That did give Aurum pause, and deepened the blush on her cheeks once more. But by then, she had drank enough that there was a blush on her cheeks regardless, and no one seemed keen on questioning why Aurum would blush every time Cullen spoke Dalish at her.

Unfortunately for Dorian, Aurum was raised with the language and could paint just…beautiful pictures with her words. She played, she won, conversations went on around her, but they always seemed to be in a lull whenever she would carefully comment. Aurum took pains to ensure that she made what sounded like a disparaging comment every time Cullen lost another article of clothing. If anyone at all noticed how she squirmed with unmet arousal, if anyone dared to see that the Inquisitor was agitated and her pupils were blown wide and she was raking over Cullen’s naked skin with abject desire, no one dared comment on it.

Privately, the players who were not being squicked out by Aurum’s incessant filthy sexual commentary were pleased that this little game was working so well. Josephine counted getting Cullen to strip down as the reason for Aurum’s lilting voice, Varric counted the alcohol as their saving grace to start this, Dorian knew that his little dirty-talk trick was working, but it was working too well , and Cassandra, Cole, Blackwall, and Bull were along for the ride. Bull was all but asleep on the table at this point, still managing to win the odd hand.

(Aurum had heard Cole start to mumble something about “She hides it in her words, but she means them, she means it and she wants him to-” and wisely distracted the spirit by asking him to clarify what he thought of the songs of the cards, getting him to ramble about that instead.)

When Cullen was naked, and apparently the games being played simultaneous to each other were ending, Aurum played her final card, both literally, winning back but a few silvers from the pot, and metaphorically, swallowing down her nervousness and looking to Cullen once more.

“Neran ihn bre’palas, i vallasan bredhas i’ma’da’vin, Ema ‘ma dhula i pala em. Sathan, Cullen,” she growled, half playfully, half in full seriousness. Cullen smiled and nodded, clearly not understanding what she had said, but more in agreement to the tone and to what he thought he had been saying. ( _I like it when you fuck me deep and paint my insides with your cum._ )

Dorian swore in Tevene, and hid his face in his hands. Cassandra looked between Dorian and Aurum, one of her eyebrows arched, and then sighed, and put her cards down.

“I’m leaving. I don’t want to witness our Commander’s walk of shame back to the barracks.”

Dorian looked up very quickly, gave Cullen a quick once over, and very quickly said “Well, I do!” to everyone’s groaning.

Still, the ones conscious enough to stand, did so, and left the table. Aurum lingered perhaps a moment longer, smirking at Cullen as her next move became clear. He couldn’t possibly know what he had been saying to her, but she was going to teach him. Oh, he would learn.

She winked at him, and went to talk with Varric, for just a moment. Dorian had made himself scarce as soon as possible, and Aurum noted that with a grin. Varric extracted a promise for her to play one more game after all this was all over, and Aurum bid him goodnight. Sera sat up from underneath the table as Aurum passed by, and the elf was blessedly quiet soon after. Aurum hunted her prey with all the intensity she usually did, just with less focus because the world was a little more tipsy than usual.

Cullen was…not great at hiding, it turned out. He had found a darkened corner – a pantry, actually, with a half-door closed and him, hiding in the shadows as he waited for the tavern to be well and truly empty.

Aurum snuck up on him on silent feet, and only revealed herself at the last possible moment. Cullen jumped, startled, but was soothed immediately by Aurum sliding into his hidey-hole with him, pressing her body up against his.

“Aurum, I-”

“Cullen, ma’vheraan, what did Dorian teach you to say?” she whispered, twining her fingers through his hair.

He leaned into her touch, even as he tried to find the words.

“That you were more beautiful than anything I had seen, Aurum. I wanted to learn and he agreed to help over out last game and I hope I wasn’t pronouncing anything wrong but could you ple-”

She shushed him with a finger placed against his lips, and then a quick kiss.

“Dorian is a bad liar, my lion. Do you want to know what you were saying to me, in full view of our Clan, without even once blinking?” she purred, her fingers dancing down his delightfully bare chest.

Aurum could never tire of seeing him naked. Creators, was he a man built with sin and temptation in his skin.

“Maker, I’m not truly certain. I’m sorry if I offered offense, Aurum, I didn’t mean-”

“You asked me to dance as the wolves do, my lion. An idiom rather endemic to my clans and others that still find glory in Fen’Harel. You asked to take me like a wolf would. You asked to fuck me.”

Aurum could feel Cullen’s blush heat the skin beneath her fingers, but she could also feel the stir of his cock against her thigh. He stammered an apology, one that did not get too far out of his mouth before she was continuing.

“Sathan, ava ‘ma edhis? If Josephine knew that the Commander of the Inquisition was staring across the table at the Inquisitor and asking, ever so politely, for her to suck his dick, what do you think she would do?”

Cullen gasped as she reached down to stroke his cock. He fell back against the wall of the pantry, deeper into the shadows, and Aurum followed his movement, pressing him up against the wall, growling at him when he tried to apologize again. She suckled a new bruise, deep and dark and angry beneath his ear as chastisement before moving up so that her lips were pressed against his ear.

“And I suppose it is a good thing you don’t speak Dalish, because you couldn’t understand my response, could you?

He trembled, and his hard cock pressed insistently against her hip now.

“Pala ma ara’br’av sule ir rosas’da’din, em avan ma mahnnar, Cullen,” she breathed, her voice nothing more than a whisper. “Fuck my throat, Commander. I want to take so much of your cum that the taste of it lingers into the next year.”

Cullen bit back the moan in the back of his throat, and pulled Aurum flush to him, panting as he tried to form words. Aurum forced that silly thought away from him with a distracting nip to his earlobe before she kissed him. As soon as her lips were pressed to his once again, Cullen found his courage and maneuvered them both so that Aurum was pressed up against the wall, her hands pinned above her head as he sought the rough friction of her clothing against his oversensitive flesh.

“What else, Aurum? What else did Dorian make me say?” he grunted in the moment he could bear to pull away from her.

“ ‘Nuvenan ara’len’pala, i ethan mar’av’in i’ara’da’vin’. Do you really, Cullen? Would you really masturbate while I kneel beneath you until you cover my face with a vallaslin of cum? Because I would wear it proudly in your bed,” she whispered, jerking her hand out of his grasp to pull him back into a kiss.

She had to muffle his moan with her mouth, and before he could pull away and ask a stupid question, Aurum was already unfastening the topmost clasps of her tunic and sinking to her knees in the small space provided by the pantry. Cullen bit his knuckles and rested his forehead on the wall to try and brace himself as Aurum licked her lips, and then licked his cock.

“Shit, Aurum!” he groaned as she slowly took his length into her mouth.

It did not take much for her to work him into a frenzy, and soon, he was thrusting into her mouth, biting back praises because he did not know where or when or if someone else would come to try and find him to give him something to wear back to his rooms. If someone caught them? Someone came by and saw the Inquisitor on her knees for him, her mouth wrapped around his prick, his hand buried in her hair, her hands on his hips? Josephine would have Leliana kill whoever it was so as to keep the shameful secret from spreading, but in that moment all he could find himself caring about was Aurum’s lips spread around his cock.

He never wanted this to stop. He wanted her and only her.

" _Yessss_ ," he hissed as her tongue pressed against the head of his cock.

Aurum moaned his name, muffled by his cock, and Cullen's vision went spotty. He scrabbled for something to hold onto in the pantry, and settled on bracing his forearm on the wall behind her, while his other hand carded through her hair. He reached for her ear, tugging on the tip, running his fingers down the lobe in time with her movements. Aurum gasped, reaching for his hips and pulling him deeper into her. They quickly found a rhythm together, and Cullen had to fight against the sounds in his throat. He leaned into his arm, biting down to keep from being loud as Aurum's head bobbed in time with his shallow thrusts.

Maker, it didn't matter that anyone could come in right then because Aurum was here and she was _his_ and he had _her_. His back arched, and he groaned her name into the flesh of his arm, trying to be quiet as she did everything in her power to break his ability to do so. She wanted to hear him, she wanted to hear him come to pieces and come apart, and she didn't mind how it happened. She just wanted.


	35. The Stability

The universe had awful timing.

Just as Cullen’s pleasure crescendoed into an orgasm, just as he felt Aurum’s mouth slide all the way down to the very base of his cock as she swallowed his spend greedily, he heard a too-peppy, too-happy-for-what-he-had-wrought Tevinter Altus announce his approach.

“Cullen, I scavenged an old cloak and trousers for you to use to cover yourself!” Dorian said cheerily, closing in on their hiding place.

Fear drove a sharp lance of adrenaline through him, but Aurum’s mouth still working on sucking the very head of his cock turned the adrenaline into searing pleasure all over again. He prayed to the Maker and Andraste herself that Aurum would be still so that he could manage a response, but no. Aurum would never be made to kowtow to the will of the Gods she did not follow, and slowly, she bobbed her head up and down his length.

“T-thank you, Dorian,” Cullen grit out, pushing Aurum up against the wall with his hips, hoping the shadows would be enough to keep her from being discovered.

“Come and get it, you.”

“I would rather stay here. Just leave it out there. I will get it when you are gone, Dorian.”

Dorian’s pout could be heard throughout all of Skyhold it seemed, and for a blessed moment, Cullen thought Dorian had left. Aurum had not ceased her movements and it was getting increasingly difficult to keep his voice down and his mind centered on what should be happening.

“Have you seen dear Aurum?” Dorian asked, his smile making his words drip with saccharine trickery.

It did not seem as if Dorian’s voice was coming any closer, and in a daring move that surprised even Cullen as he did it, he started thrusting back into Aurum’s mouth again. Slow enough to not create any sort of undue sound or indication of what was happening but enough so that he could continue to feel that sweet blend of hot wet soft that was the inside of Aurum’s mouth.

“I haven’t seen anyone since I got in this pantry, Dorian. Now please, leave the clothes and then leave. I would like to preserve some of my dignity.”

Dorian huffed, and this time, Cullen could hear the Altus leave. He breathed easier , and looked down, to where Aurum’s eyes were shining in the dark. Elvhen eyes did that, he knew. But those eyes were shining up at him while her mouth was wrapped around his cock and while he may not be able to cum again just yet, Cullen definitely felt the ache for a more horizontal place to throw Aurum onto.

She smirked at him and slowly withdrew.

“Get your clothes, Cullen,” she whispered and Cullen rushed to obey, darting out of the pantry just long enough to ensure that there was a clear way to escape out the back of the Tavern and that Dorian wasn’t lingering about.

Hurriedly, he threw on the trousers, tying them in place as he threw the cloak around his shoulders and pulled the hood up over his face. Not that it would help, especially in Skyhold, but the air of anonymity was soothing.

“The coast is clear, Aurum, let’s-”

Aurum darted out of the pantry, took him by the hand, and all but pulled him along behind her, out into the open air of Skyhold’s courtyard, quickly crossed the majority of the mostly silent courtyard, and then she was dragging almost immediately into the nearest unused part of the stable by the barn.

Cullen was breathless by the time they made it into the stall with the door closing behind them, and when Aurum pushed him into the nearest bale of loose hay, he nearly yelled out. He remembered himself just in time, thankfully, because moments later, Aurum was climbing into his lap, straddling his hips and kissing him down into the prickly hay. Her mouth tasted like his seed, and his tongue was quick to seek out more of that taste in her mouth so he could _remember_ that taste in her mouth.

“Someone might be watching the parapets for you, Cullen. Keep them waiting and wondering and unable to make up any rumors.”

“Like, say, “I saw the Commander snogging the Inquisitor in the stables”, perhaps?” Cullen commented drily, picking a stray piece of hay out of his hair, trying to remember how to be a proper gentleman when he could still taste her on his tongue. “We really can't have that, they can't know-”

“All that talk, and all you want to do is snog me? Serah, I am shocked. Didn’t you hear me in there?” Aurum interrupted, not wanting to hear his reasoning for not wanting her in his lap.

Aurum leaned over him again, smiling devilishly. Cullen shivered in anticipation.

“Neran ihn bre’palas, i vallasan bredhas i’ma’da’vin. Ema ‘ma dhula i pala em.”

She kissed him sweetly before grinding herself down on his cock. Carefully, slowly, she turned his head to the side with a finger so she could press her mouth against his ear again.

“I like it when you fuck me deep and paint my insides with your cum, Cullen. Pull my hair and fuck. Me.”

Whatever restraint Cullen had possessed, whatever thin shred of decency he had retained throughout having Aurum’s mouth on his cock even as her best friend was footsteps away, even as he discovered just what it meant to talk filthy nothings in Dalish, whatever had been there, vanished like smoke into the night sky.

He wished he could remember how he got Aurum on her back atop his cloak so quickly and his cock out and her own trousers off, but he couldn’t. He really couldn’t recall much anything except how it felt to sink into Aurum’s dripping wet, smolderingly hot cunt. They had to be quiet, but this was…this was a romp in the hay. It was messy and sloppy and hot and passionate. It was clothing half undone, it was bitten-back moans and sharp gasps of pleasure, it was the too-loud sound of flesh meeting and drawing away, it was, Maker it was perfect.

Cullen had never tupped a girl in the hay, despite his homely upbringing, but he quite saw the allure of it now. Aurum’s hands were fisted in his borrowed cloak and there were pieces of hay scattered everywhere, poking and prodding him every time he moved away from her. It seemed that anywhere that wasn’t her was some small discomfort, and so he drowned all the more sweetly in her softness.

Aurum clenched her teeth around endearments, around commands, around sounds and groans and moans. Now, no matter what else she thought of, her mind unhelpfully recalled Cullen’s heavy human tongue laying across Dalish words and that only made her arousal burn her the more keenly. The only thing she cared about, really, was the remembrance of those words, and the few that Cullen had picked up enough to growl at her as he fucked her.

He buried his hand in her hair and pulled, hard enough to send pain stuttering across her scalp and force her to bare her throat to him. It was Cullen’s turn to lean down over her pale neck and leave his own stippling of bruises in the wake of his mouth. Aurum bit her lip to keep from moaning overloud, delighting in the feeling of his blunted teeth against her skin.

She only released her stranglehold on his borrowed cloak when her release came upon her, pulling Cullen down flush against her so she could bury her face in his neck and scream to her heart’s contentment. Cullen groaned against her skin in return, unable to resist the pleasure of feeling her cunt clench down around his cock, cumming into her like she had commanded him to do.

Maker, he wanted to continue, but the chill air of Skyhold settled across the back of his sweat-slicked neck and he knew that any longer would result in their discovery. Aurum panted beneath him, still trembling in the aftershocks of pleasure, her fist pressed against her lips to try and halt any breathless moans. Cullen helped her reorient her clothing, and she returned the favor, even though all he currently had to his name was a pair of trousers and a cum-stained cloak. He knew, he knew he should get up and get back to his loft, and she should return to her bedroom, but there could be no real harm in…in just staying for a little bit longer, right? The cloak was large enough to provide a barrier for them both from the prickles of the hay, and Aurum only had to move her hand slightly to pull her Hart’s saddle blanket from its position with the rest of her tack over to the both of them, draping them in dalish-woven warmth.

The blanket smelled like horse.

They smelt of sex. And beer. And sex and each other and sex again.

But Aurum still curled into his side, slinging a leg over his hips and burying her face in his neck, and Cullen could find no better way to reciprocate other than wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her closer to him so he could kiss the crown of her head. The warmth, the feeling, all of it lulled him down into sleep faster than he would have otherwise succumbed, and, with Aurum at his side, Cullen and her both fell down into a deep, peaceful, sleep.

* * *

Awareness came slowly to her. She was warm, and comfortable. Everything around her smelled like home, smelled like belonging. Aurum reached for the closest thing to her, and dragged it closer, curling around it because it smelled nice and she liked being close to it. She whimpered as light finally hit her face, growling after it did not cease to be exactly where she did not want it to be.

Aurum burrowed beneath her blankets, pulling pillows over her head and curling into a tight ball. The darkness soothed her, and she fell back into a pleasant half-slumber. The bells of the chantry began tolling, rousing her soon after she managed to find that dream she had been having once again.

Growling this time, Aurum peeked her head up out of her den of blankets and pillows, glaring at the sun’s light, trying to see if it was still early enough for her to be able to beg leniency from Jospehine’s schedule. But it wasn’t. She needed to be up, and dressed, and at the War Table in an hour, if her reading of the sun’s position was correct.

Aurum groaned at length and slowly removed herself from her bed.

Well, she kind of just rolled off her bed, onto the floor and moaned at the injustice of it all. Her hangover thundered in the back of her mind, and she shook her head groggily. Her back ached in a way that she didn’t anticipate, and it took her too long to remember how it was that she got from the stables back to her bed. Dully, she noticed that the familiar blanket was her Hart’s saddle blanket.

She blushed, and grinned down at the blanket.

* * *

“ _Aurum_ , please, I shouldn’t – I need to - someone could – we might be seen – Maker’s _breath_ keep doing that.”

Cullen’s voice tasted so good as it rumbled through his throat. She held his throat in her teeth, and had him pinned up against the back of her throne. If anyone came into the Grand Hall, anyone at all, they would easily find the Inquisitor and Commander snogging like randy teenagers, their half-dressed bodies barely covered by a saddle-blanket and the thrill of the possibility of being caught made everything so much sweeter.

Aurum’s hands worked at the hem of his pants, her fingers tracing the outline of his cock. Cullen gasped, and cursed over-loud. She bit down on his throat in chastisement, hissing a dalish word at him for his momentary lapse of judgment.

“Be _quiet_ , Cullen,” she snapped.

He had been attempting to be gallant, to walk her back to her rooms as any gentleman would in such circumstances (he had **fucked** her in the hay, the least he could do was walk her to her room), but somehow in between the stables and the front door of the Grand Hall, his hands had found their way back under her shirt, and in between the foyer of the Hall and the table where Varric usually sat as he worked, her shirt had been ripped from her body and thrown to be fuel for the fire. He had thrown her down atop the table, pinning her there with a growl so he could leave a trail of love-bruises across her collarbones. Aurum had cried out overloud at that, arching beneath him, nearly sobbing his name.

That was when he had picked her and her blanket up and rushed to the only real hiding place in the Hall – behind her tall-backed, imposing throne, and that was where she had pinned him instead, intent upon drawing the same sorts of sounds out of him as he had taken out of her.

“Aurum! Aurum, please, _Aurum_ , please!” he chanted.

She let him up, and dragged him to the side, into the side corridor that led up to her room. Cullen went willingly, and as soon as the door was closed and they had some small modicum of privacy, he crowded her up against the rough stone wall. Her blanket dropped to the floor.

“Josephine’s asleep, right?” Cullen whispered, jerking his head back to indicate the direction Josephine’s office was in.

Aurum had to force herself to remember that Josephine’s office had no roof and opened up into the wide stairwell that led to Aurum’s room. If Josephine was in her office, she would be able to hear whatever was going to go on between the two of them. Quickly, Aurum nodded her head. Josephine had gone to bed, with everyone else. The hour was late, there was no need for the concern they would have otherwise.

Cullen purred at her, reaching for her hands and pinning them above her head. He held her hands against the rough stone and leaned down over her. He kissed her hard, biting her lip and sucking on it until he was certain there was a bruise forming on her bottom lip. Aurum whimpered, jerking her hips against his. His grip tightened on her wrists hard enough for her to feel the fine bones in her hands grind against each other. He growled when she tugged on her wrists and crushed her up against the wall with his body, forcing her to be still.

Breathless, Aurum stared up at him, her mouth open and eyes bright.

“Cullen?” she whispered, her voice small.

“ **Aurum** ,” he snarled. “ _My_ Aurum.”

She nodded, and he smirked at her. Her knees went weak and he held her in place. She was breathless with want and needed Cullen to do something, anything to her. His strength made her tremble.

“I’m going to fuck you up against this wall, Aurum.”

“Creators, _yes_ , Cullen, please!”

* * *

Aurum looked at the scratches on her back in the mirror, and rubbed her thighs together. They were still slick with his cum, and that made her shudder. She grinned at bruises she saw in the shape of his fingers and mouth, and sighed wistfully at the memory of Cullen holding her tight to him and rutting into her up against a wall. He had vanished as soon as they were done, but not before stealing one last, desperate and ferocious kiss from her. The memory of it made her bruised lips tingle.

Pieces of hay were still stuck in her hair, and as she went about dressing herself, she remembered that the remains of her shirt would probably be discovered by one of the servants, if they hadn’t been already. She licked her teeth. That was her shirt, and it would not take much thought to piece it back to her, and then to her doing something with someone, and then, perhaps, to Cullen and her being together.

Creators, that was something to think about.

Oh it definitely was a stretch of the imagination, she knew that. He had not come out and made the proper overtures, but he had left her a necklace of hasty bruises across her neck and throat. Aurum had a hard time believing that anyone could wish for secrecy when they left such adoring marks on their lover’s flesh. She wanted to believe it could be true, but she knew better than to hope for such things without more information.

It did not stop her from trying to make certain that she looked more than presentable before heading down to the meeting with her Advisors. She blamed Dorian’s influence for the sudden presence of kohl in the small stand by her mirror, along with some gold dust. He insisted it made her eyes stand out more to have them decorated as such.

She had to agree. It looked good on her. Really good.

Dorian said he was having some new clothes made for them both, and she was actually looking forward to it. She enjoyed the jewelry and the way things looked on her, and having Dorian as her First only gave her further insight into things that she had not taken the time to consider before. She wore her piercings, mixing them with a few of the new golden ones that Dorian had given her. She even put on some of the ostentatious rings he had given her as well.

Aurum looked herself over in the mirror, and gave a quick, happy twirl. Her robes were not new, not by any stretch of the word, but Dorian had insisted upon Tevinter stylings to some of them and Aurum enjoyed them.

With one last smile at her reflection, Aurum adjusted the collar of her chosen robe so that it hung open just far enough to let some of the deep marks from Cullen’s mouth come into visibility.

As peppily as she could ever move in the mornings, Aurum jogged down from her loft, ignoring the rumble in her stomach. She had a meeting to get too, after all. She breezed past Josephine, who was working on some last-minute reports at her desk, it looked like. Josephine watched her pass by, and Aurum did not see the wide smile that split the Ambassador’s face.

Leliana was only a few steps behind Aurum, but as soon as Josephine made eye contact with her and waved her hand, Leliana stopped and did not try and greet Aurum. So the Inquisitor walked into the War Table Room, where the Commander of her forces already was looking over troop movement, breathless and expectant.

She would never admit to it aloud, but she rushed in, wanting Cullen to greet her with an embrace and a kiss. Or more than one kiss.

Instead, however, Cullen looked up as the door shut behind her and blanched. He had not quite managed to get his armor back, so he was dressed far more casually than he usually was, and clearly was uncomfortable with that. But still, she was thrilled to see him like this. He was so much more accessible to her, and roving fingers could make short work of what he _was_ wearing. She could have him on the War Table. This time it would be _him_ that was pinned down, and she would ride him -

“Aurum!” he started, his eyes glued to the spots on her neck where the imprint of his mouth was repeated in glorious decoration.

“Yes, ma’vhen-?”

“Heal those, right now! Did Josephine see – Andraste _preserve me_ , did Leliana see them?”

She blinked, and fear touched her heart.

“Heal…what?”

Maybe she misunderstood. Maybe he was talking about something else?

“Those…marks! Aurum, we can’t let them see those! They’d figure out – we’d never hear the end of it! We can't allow that!”

No, she hadn’t misunderstood, after all. He…didn’t want them to know. Her stomach fell, and with it, her heart. She had thought that he was starting to be comfortable with them. She thought that he had wanted this. Especially after last night, Aurum had thought that he would understand, that he was ready for everyone to know. Creators preserve her, he had left bruises all across her n neck and told her she was _his_ but apparently that was not what he wanted in the daylight. No, in the daylight, she was someone else’s, but not his.

(viciously, she remembered how open with his affections he had been with the _other_ , and nothing she could think of would soften that hurt)

He didn’t want them to know?

“O-of course, Cullen. A moment.”

She let her magic wash over her, but there was no joy in it. No relief from any pain. In fact, Aurum could easily be convinced to consider healing those marks so that the other Advisors would not see the most painful act of healing she’d ever had to do.

And there had been that whole business with taking an arrow to the gut all those years ago, then healing it without being truly able to use her magic right then. It had not been a good moment.

This was still worse.

“Better?” she asked, her voice subdued, and eyes downcast.

“Much, thank you,” he purred.

She bit the inside of her cheek. He didn’t want them to have the sort of relationship anyone knew about. For whatever reason, he was not proud of her. Not proud enough to let her wear his marks on her skin, not proud enough to let the others in their clan and community know that he claimed her. Her back ached from where he had pushed her up against a wall, and with a sneer she disguised as best as possible, she healed those wounds as well.

If he wanted to lay his hands upon her and leave bruises in his wake, only to ignore them in the sun’s light, she could oblige him.

Aurum was not going to let him leave his fingerprints on her if he wasn’t willing to confess to them being his.

For fear of crying, she looked to the sun outside, letting her tears wash back into her eyes, not willing to risk smudging her khol. Not on Cullen. Not on him. No tears for he who would play her like this.

She shook her head as the other three advisors came in. Morrigan stood beside her, and Josephine and Leliana took their places on either side of Cullen. She had pride. The pride of her People, the pride she had lain bare before him, roused itself and she remembered herself. She was Aurum, trained of Deshanna Isthamoriel Lavellan. Blood of the Most Noble House. She was the Inquisitor. She was more than someone who felt her heart breaking.

But it was still breaking.

Leliana ribbed Cullen on the mark she had left on his neck, and when he blushed and stammered, Aurum interjected.

“Apologies Commander, you should have told me you had been injured.”

Her words came out frosty, and the quick flash of magic that alight upon the wine-dark bruise on Cullen’s neck healed it with perhaps too much aggression. Cullen flinched, and then rubbed the sore spot on his neck ruefully.

“T-thank you, Inquisitor.”

Leliana gave her a queer look, one, which Josephine echoed from the other side of Cullen. How was it that she was so upset? Aurum and Cullen…they should have been…

The two conspirators each considered what had happened with confusion. Aurum had been pleased, bright and happy, dressed well on the path to Cullen. After the previous night, after everything that Leliana’s spies had been reporting on, after what they had set up, after what had been seen (and _heard_ , good Andraste) to have Aurum not-at-all disguising how uninterested she was in Cullen in that moment was supremely confusing.

There had not been that much time, what on _earth_ could Cullen have done in such a short amount of time to upset her?

Cullen frowned, and spoke less and less as the meeting went on. Aurum delegated as she had always done, and were it not for the short, clipped sentences, there could be no distinguishing her mood from any of her other ones. She acted as she would otherwise, made the decisions that she would have made otherwise, but she spoke only briefly. There were no explanations, not today.

She listened to the problems, and the suggestions the advisors made, and then made her choice. This was not a day where she felt like giving explanations on why she was deciding how she was. That was for days when she did not feel like screaming. As soon as Josephine indicated that there was nothing more to the day, Aurum nodded and made to turn away, her usual dismissal.

In tandem, both Morrigan and Cullen called her name, each in their own tone that indicated that they wanted to talk.

It was passing odd that Morrigan actually wished to speak with her in anything other than vaguely irritating blasé riddles (a habit Kieran had picked up, and one he seemed insistent upon handing over to Sarah), and Aurum turned to give her attention to the other apostate.

“Another time, Commander. Morrigan, what is it you want?”

Cullen’s hurt look passed by her without her notice. She had, after all, better things to do. The sun was up, and he had made it rather clear about what happened between them when the sun was shining:

 _Nothing_.


	36. The Bend

Morrigan, in her usual roundabout way, got around to telling Aurum just what had had her so preoccupied lately.

Aurum was standing at the foot of it, carefully holding as still as possible. Her ears were frozen high up, pinned back flat against her skull, and her jaw was clenched. Morrigan dithered on, droning about how she had learned all this ancient elvhen knowledge and read all the appropriate books that Aurum would never have the chance to see because, oops, they had been destroyed or she had not brought them with her.

An eluvian stood before them both.

Aurum could hear the hum of magic, deep and resonant, feel it throbbing against her bones. Skyhold had always meant to have an eluvian, Aurum had known this. All the old fortresses would have had an eluvian, as it was merely the most practical way to get from one part of Thedas to another in the time when such things were truly banal.

But there was an _eluvian_ right in front of her. Morrigan had brought it into Skyhold by means unknown, waltzed it right past Aurum and planted it in this side room to study in secret. Aurum’s heart burned at the thought of it. This was a piece of _her_ culture, _her_ history, and Morrigan had seen fit to hide it away so she could look at it and touch it with her shemlen fingers?!

The eluvian’s gateway opened, and Aurum bit her tongue to keep from cursing. She could hear the Fade on the other side, whispering out into this side of the Veil. Morrigan did not even get the chance to invite her to pass through the barrier. Aurum went without asking. This was her history, her People’s history and she would not let someone else take it from her.

What she saw on the other side took her breath away. The Fade was mere breaths from where she stood, but she stood in the dust of those who went before. Morrigan came through moments later, still lecturing on what this all _meant_ , Inquisitor, and Aurum was more than a little distracted. She reached out to touch one of the deadened mirrors, letting her magic flicker across the old relic.

The mirror did not magically spring to life, and nothing more out of the ordinary happened, but Aurum still smiled to herself. She had lain her hand where no one else had for centuries. She had _this_ , even if it was tainted by Morrigan’s incessant need to prove herself more valuable than anyone else.

Her mouth moved around questions she did not mean, because her intent was not to truly delve into the conversation, but to gauge how much Morrigan knew. If Morrigan had kept this a secret, there were certainly others hovering in the background. Aurum would have none of it. But she certainly was not going to let Morrigan know just what _she_ knew.

This was a game the both of them could play at.

Aurum had the advantage, because Morrigan still thought her sitting to the side without comprehending the rules.

She shook her head, and put her thoughts of revenge and mischief to the side. Morrigan had wandered into her quagmire, and that was still a problem for a time when she was not standing upon the bones of her People’s culture. Morrigan prattled on, and Aurum only-half listened. She understood that what Morrigan was suggesting was in all likelihood, correct, she understood that yes, Corypheus should never be able to access the eluvians, for the proximity to the True Fade, and yes and yes and yes.

All important points.

None quite so important as the fact that she was standing on the grounds of her forefathers. There was a smile on her face that she did not think would fade for a long while. The fears and terrors and responsibility of everything faded for just a moment, and she was granted chilling _clarity._

Aurum wandered through the field of defunct eluvians, breathless and excited. One of the eluvians, separate from the rest, tickled something in the back of her mind, however. It was smaller, out of the way, and at the base, there were curling sculptures. She had once seen the drawings that included those.

“ _Sabrae_!” she hissed.

At the Arlathven – Aurum _remembered_ it. She remembered the new First of the Sabrae clan talking about how she wished to create a working one, and had perhaps found what could be one down in the Brecilian Forest. It was a vague memory, foggy at best, but it was there and Aurum could not help her quick look around to see if there was any sign of another elvhen having gained access to this area. No signs were visible, and though Aurum suspected that Morrigan had been here more than once, she did not think the other woman would have disturbed any other signs in here.

Aurum had letters to write. She knew the Sabrae clan had been subsumed into another after the bad business with Marethari, but she could not quite remember where they had all gone.

She licked her lips and nodded along as Morrigan suggested they leave to talk more about how she was looking for a solution to the problems that plagued them now that they had a moderately good idea of what, exactly, Corypheus was after. Because yes, if there were any other active eluvians, then Corypheus would seek them out, and yes, that was definitely something to avoid. Even if they were still uncertain on what methods, exactly, he was looking into in order to get what he wanted, the eluvian was definitely a good starting point.

Hours after she and Morrigan had walked back through the eluvian, into the crisp air of Skyhold, she could still feel the press of that not-quite-Fade place against her skin. It was a comfort, a comfort she couldn’t – _didn’t_ deserve.

She shuddered and tried to get the thought of it out of her mind. It was alluring, she could not deny that. To walk where her ancestors had, back in a time of immortality and –

“Inquisitor, a moment of your time, please?”

Aurum blinked herself out of her reverie, and turned to the page who had been sent to garner her attention.

“Commander Cullen seeks your presence in his office at your leisure, Madame Inquisitor.”

She merely nodded, knowing that the page more than likely had another dozen messages to deliver about the castle, and not wanting to overcomplicate things. Aurum would meet with Cullen, then, if that was what he wanted. It was not an urgent meeting, apparently, and Aurum had much to think about still. Her feelings roared up in the back of her mind, and Aurum defiantly shoved them back down.

She walked first to Solas, and in muted Dalish, told him what Morrigan had shown her. Solas froze and stared at her, and then quickly grilled her for all of the pertinent information she could possibly give him. Even with all the information she had, Solas still wanted more. He wanted to know everything, nearly obsessing over every small moment she had had in there. When she mentioned the eluvian that the Sabrae first had been working on actually having a presence in there, Solas froze.

“It worked?”

“I saw it. It was not active, I couldn’t get through it or see it activated. But if-”

“We need to talk to her. We need to talk to her and see if we can activate that eluvian. Any more of these pieces of elvhen culture that can be activated, the advantages would be profound.”

She nodded. He did not need to tell her that. It was already planned, but it was nice to have someone so easily back her up. Especially someone she admired as much as she admired Solas. He was a right prick sometimes, yes. But he was still knowledgeable beyond anything she could hope to be on her own. Solas was a good friend, and he deserved to know. Sera would not care, and she did not think to tell Dorian just yet. Solas knew first, because he knew more than Dorian.

“Thank you for telling me of this lethallan, the importance of this act will not be forgotten.”

She blushed and grinned at that. The praise had an unusual warmth blooming in her chest, and she averted her eyes quickly. Solas reached out and gently took her hand in his. Shocked, Aurum allowed the moment, unsure of what to do. Snatching her hands away would be rude, and Solas was already moving, his thumb brushing against where the Anchor rested, dormant, in her palm.

“Does it still hurt you, Aurum?”

He sounded sad, and her overburdened heart sagged beneath it. Aurum did not want to encourage his sorrow, and immediately sought to alleviate it.

“Only…sometimes, Solas. Closing rifts is no more comfortable than it was at the start, but it seems to have stabilized more than it was in the beginning. The more rifts I close, the less it hurts in the interim.”

Almost as if the Anchor knew it was being discussed, it hissed, sparking against Solas’ fingers. Aurum flinched, her lip curling up in discomfort. Solas apologized immediately, and pressed his fingers deeper against the Anchor. The pressure soothed the pain, shockingly enough.

“Whenever _I_ do that, it never works. Magic fingers you have there, hahren.”

Solas stammered uncharacteristically and withdrew from her, talking needlessly at length about the Anchor and how he had seen ways to soothe such magics in his dreaming, until Aurum reached out and cupped her hand around the back of his neck. She pulled him close, and as she did with Dorian more and more often, dipped her head down to press her forehead to his cheek, gently. A greeting between close friends, a sign of respect and love.

The elder mage stood very still as Aurum retreated from him, back to a polite distance, where she bowed politely. Solas inclined his head as well, watching her with a careful gaze as she walked towards the ramp that led up to the library where Dorian was undoubtedly pouring over some musty tome or another.

Aurum pretended not to notice the heat in Solas’ eyes.

Shaking her head, she looked up to Dorian, forcing a smile on her face. One that he saw through as soon as he looked up at her, and one that she let slide as soon as she noticed that he had seen through it.

“Aurum, what’s wrong?” he asked, reaching out to rest a hand on her elbow.

She tried to hold back the emotions, tried to hold back the maelstrom behind her teeth, but his eyebrows quirked with worry, and she crumpled.

Everything came out in a breathless, rambling Tevene rush, and Dorian was quick to bunde her up in his arms and mutter condolences into her hair. She did not cry, not really, but her voice cracked around some of the words. Dorian hushed her when her voice edged over to panic, soothing her as best he could. She stilled only after all the words had come out, and Dorian moved her out of easy view of anyone entering the library so no one would see the Inquisitor weeping.

Granted, no tears ever fell, but with Aurum, that was a rarity. She curled into him, bemoaning everything about the situation. She didn’t stop until everything she had been holding in behind her teeth bled out of her. Dorian coddled her through it all, shushing her when she grew over-loud.

“Dear, dear, it is alright. It is alright, Aurum.”

She trembled.

Because it wasn’t.

“You know he doesn’t unders-”

“I just _want_ him to, though, Dorian! I want him to understand, I want him to know, I want him to know and – and I want him to _want_ to know and understand.”

He nodded and held her close. Aurum only calmed down by fractions, relaxing into Dorian’s arms, and doing her best to keep from smearing her makeup. He ran his thumb across the apple of her cheek and pressed a brief kiss to her temple. She sniffled piteously, and bit down the urge to whimper as he drew away.

“Does he mean that much to you, sister mine?”

Aurum rolled her eyes.

“No, Dorian, I get all weepy over _every_ blond shem I see. Yes, he means that much to me, no I don’t think it’s good that he does, because I don’t mean as much to him.”

“You don’t believe that, do you? He looks at you like you are made of starlight, Aurum.”

“Until he fears that someone else will see him looking to the skies, you mean?” came her bitter response.

Dorian sighed.

“That is not fair to him, Aurum.”

“I don’t feel like being fair to him, Dorian. He keeps giving me opposing messages and it is driving me _mad_.”

“You…I understand, Aurum. I understand. I have been there before. Perhaps…perhaps you should go find somewhere to be alone for a while. That smaller research room off by the kitchens, perhaps? No one wanders about there, and I think it may do you good to not be the Inquisitor for awhile.”

Aurum grumbled. He wasn’t _wrong_. She was tired of being the Inquisitor, of only ever being the Inquisitor, and there was not just a small part of her that wanted to rip the crest of the Inquisition off of every last thing she passed that bore it, because it was so _easy_ to blame anything and everything for the howling in her chest.

She had borne it too long.

Hidden it too long.

And it had only taken one look, one phrase, one _single_ person to ask her if she was okay for it to all start crumbling down around her. There was a limit to strength, to Force of Will, to any one person, and Aurum had surpassed what she had thought she was capable of months ago. But right now, after everything else, she just wanted – she wanted –

Creators save her, she wanted Cullen and he didn’t want her back.

Dorian hugged her close again, and she begrudgingly accepted the affection. He meant well, in fact he probably meant the best possible things by his choice of contact, but Aurum was not much in a hugging mood after her near breakdown in a public place. Crying was not something a Clan Keeper did, especially not in public. Coming close to crying was just as bad, if not worse.

Do or do not, and all that. She was more than herself. She had a duty to her People, to her people, to the Inquisition, to the people of Thedas who relied on her to end the thread of Corypheus. She had a duty to them all and she was drowning beneath it.

“Like a wet cat, you are, my dear.”

Aurum snorted and reached up to ruffle Dorian’s otherwise immaculate hair. He squawked irritably, batting her hands away and hastily fixing the disaster she had wrought upon his painstaking styling.

“What, would you prefer I call you a wet _dog_ , then?” he growled, shoving her away when she made another attempt at his hair.

“At least it’d be appropriate, innit?”

Dorian made a face at her accent, and Aurum winked at him. Dropping pretenses of being The Inquisitor also meant dropping her willful suppression of her native accent.

“I’ll be there. Tell everyone else I’m somewhere if’n they as-k.”

The ‘k’ popped uncharacteristically off of the tip of her tongue, and Dorian nearly flinched, before beaming at her.

“You really are Marcher Mutt, aren’t you?” he asked with a chuckle.

“Yap.”

She waggled her eyebrows at him, and he shook his head.

“Vivienne would lose her mind if she heard you, Aurum.”

“Mmmm, tha’d be a sight.”


	37. The Break

The room to the back of the kitchens that Dorian had suggested was rarely touched – in fact, Aurum was more than certain that the two of them had been the first to find it in centuries. The door was well hidden around a near-invisible blind corner, and had looked more like a decoration leaning up against a wall than an actual passageway. They had not really come back to it since that first discovery – the books in there were almost entirely rotted through, the chair (though reupholstered in case Aurum decided she needed an office that was not also her bedchamber) was passably comfortable, if not for all the spider webs and _yes_ there were quite a few spiders lurking about.

But it was small and safe and reclusive and Aurum felt immediately better as soon as the door was shut tight behind her. No one knew where she was, save for Dorian, and that meant no one could come find her without some serious searching.

There were no words for how soothing that idea was. She was still in Skyhold, still acting as she should, still the Inquisitor, but not on the run, or running for revenge, or any of the other dozens of things she had been doing since she fell into a political power play. Aurum had time to _herself_ , well and truly herself without anyone to report to or force her into one of her many, many molds.

She was Aurum.

And Aurum laughed.

* * *

The door to his office opened, and Cullen looked up from his desk, expecting, breathless, waiting and wanting for it to be Aurum, finally come to visit him, but it was Dorian.

“We should probably talk, Cullen.”

Those words were never good to hear, and when Dorian locked the door behind him (and Cullen heard the other two doors lock as well), his heart sank into his stomach. This was not good. Whatever was going to come out of Dorian’s mouth was not going to be good. Anxiety touched him and he moved to stand closer to Dorian.

Dorian, for his part did not look too pleased either, but his displeasure seemed wholly focused on Cullen instead of anyone else. In fact, Cullen couldn’t think of any time he had seen Dorian this angry. The Altus rarely allowed any sort of emotion to play across his features so harshly, but there he was, in front of Cullen, anger holding him tightly wound.

“You’ve upset Aurum. Deeply.”

He…well Cullen certainly wasn’t expecting that. Dorian could have been angry about any number of things, but to know that this was regarding Aurum? The anxiety in his gut was joined by dread. How much could Dorian know? What had Aurum said, what had they done? They had been careful, so careful to keep the rumors from spreading – he, especially, had done his best to keep anything about them secret, to preserve her position and the respect that had been so hard for them to gain for her.

Nothing could kill a political movement like the phrase “the Herald is in a relationship with her Commander” unless it was coupled with “the commander is fucking that little elf bitch full of half-bred brats”, which is what he had heard rumblings of. He had feared for it and tried to keep things with her private but had something leaked out? Maker, let nothing have leaked out and gotten back to Aurum. His concern over what had happened just that morning had faded in the light of something else much worse possibly having had happened.

“I, what?”

“Do you know how she feels about you, Cullen?”

“Y-e, I mean, Dorian, I don’t think that we should-”

“You are hurting her. My best friend – my _first_ friend here. My sister. You are hurting her with how you’re acting. And you’re either going to stop, or you’ll cease your relationship with her.”

“ _What_.”

Dorian’s glare could have easily set him on fire, had the mage had the presence of mind to do so.

“I don’t believe I stuttered, Commander. Stop hurting her. However you choose to do it, stop.”

“What makes you think you can-”

“Cullen. Shut up. And listen.”

Dorian’s interruption made him seethe, and he made a move towards Dorian, a snarl on his lips. Dorian moved first, drawing himself up to his full height and letting his magic burn beneath his skin as a warning. Cullen could _feel_ the intent of the mage, coiling up as if to strike at him, and stopped his own movement. He had never – Dorian had never – what was going _on_?

“Aurum's had enough of you not wanting her the way she wants you, Cullen. She was _crying_ to me about it. In _very_ broken Tevene, mind you, but you made her cry. I will not let that happen again. Do you want to be with her, or not?”

“That is _none_ of your business, Dorian,” Cullen grit out, steeling himself against the trained responses in him when a mage threatened him.

“I thought I left this sort of shit behind in Tevinter, Cullen. To spurn a lover in the daylight when, in the night, you are enraptured by them? Not even the cruelest man in Tevinter could do that to someone like Aurum, but here you are. Time and again.”

Cullen’s mouth gaped. But Dorian didn’t stop.

“She wants you and of course you want her. Anyone with eyes could see how you look at her if they chanced a glance back to you when she walked by. No one does, because she is **radiance** , and who would look at you when they could behold her? But you need to stop pretending otherwise because it’s breaking her up.”

“It’s not your-” Cullen started, but Dorian held up a hand to stop him there.

“She is my _sister_ , Cullen. It is ‘my’ everything. My business, my concern, my sister. I’ve never had a sibling before, and it’s a new feeling, to be sure. Aurum deserves better than you. Deserves better than anything that’s been lain in her lap, and if you’re not going to treat her right, you shouldn’t be near her.”

Cullen had to take a moment to find his words. Anger was an easy response, sharp and biting on the tip of his tongue. He had to swallow that down. Down _deep_ , because it kept bubbling to the surface every time he tried to open his mouth. He exhaled sharply through his nose and turned away from Dorian, grabbing onto this hilt of his sword to center himself. He bit his lip and tasted blood. Furtively, he licked it away. The pain _did_ help him find his center again, and he remembered himself. He remembered why things had to be like this. Still, he kept his back to Dorian, hoping the distance would make this easier.

“Dorian, I can’t just – I just can’t abandon everything that is expected of us and sweep her off her feet. There’s…she’s the _Inquisitor_ , I can’t just, I can’t just take her away from this and pretend like it wouldn’t ruin everything we’ve been working for.”

Dorian scoffed.

“I’m not asking you to drag her into the middle of the Hall and fuck her in her Throne, dammit. I’m telling you that the way you’ve been going about doing whatever it is you’re doing with her is making her weep, and that you need to stop.”

“And if I can’t?” Cullen bit out.

“Then you should consider what is best for her heart. Not yours. She has been asked to surrender so much. She should not be asked to surrender her heart to someone who cannot do the same for her.”

Dorian spoke so easily about this, like it wouldn’t tear his heart to pieces to consider _not_ being with Aurum. She was…he had never felt what he felt for her before, with anyone else, or for anyone else. And Dorian was so casually suggesting that he just abandon everything with her unless he could stomach doing something absolutely terrifying to him. There was no good enough answer for Dorian. His friend had backed him into a corner. He would give anything to be with Aurum but it wasn’t right or proper, not yet, not now.

“Dorian, I…” he turned, and saw the look on Dorian’s face. The mage was not reveling in his pain, but sharing it. Dorian and he were close, but he was suspecting that perhaps, Dorian and Aurum were closer still. “…will try.”

The words sounded hollow on his tongue. But they soothed Dorian, and he practically could see the ruffled mess of Dorian’s emotions settle down again.

“Cullen, I know it’s hard. I just want what is best for her. After everything else being asked of her, I just want her to be happy. And Maker, do you make her _happy_.”

Dorian smiled, his eyes misting over with emotion that he quickly wiped away on his glove, as if it never happened. He shook his head and looked back to Cullen.

“You make her happy, and you make her sad. You make her feel at the extremes and it is so beautiful and so _dangerous_ at the same time. She wants you with a burning need, craves you so much it even sets my own teeth to aching, but she will still quail before you. Her heart trembles.”

Cullen frowned, looking to Dorian with confusion touching his expression. Confusion quickly gave over to suspicion. He had seen the new scars on Aurum’s body, and tasted the acrid bitterness of what he had prayed was smoke on her body, instead of…blood magic.

“How do you know that?”

“She is my sister. I know these things about her,” Dorian said flippantly, waving off Cullen’s concern with ease.

It did not allay the suspicion.

In fact, it made it worse.

He nodded, and let Dorian prattle on a little longer. But his mind was already away, thinking over what any of this actually meant, as compared to what Dorian said it meant. There could be more at stake than Dorian was willing to discuss. In fact, Cullen was willing to bet that there definitely was more to what was going on that just what Dorian had told him. The mage was rarely truly straightforward, potentially a product of growing up in a culture that demanded absolute perfection.

But that did not allay the nervousness growing in his gut.

He needed to go see Aurum, wherever she was.

“Do you know where she is right now?”

“There’s a hidden room off by the kitchens. You shouldn’t have any trouble finding it, really. She’s not being subtle about where she is.”

Cullen hesitated in leaving, and Dorian tutted, waving his hand over his shoulder. The doors all unlocked in sync, and Dorian gestured grandly behind him.

“Well go on then.” 

* * *

She was not hard to find, just like Dorian had said. Cullen hadn’t even known this little alcove of a room existed, but the closer he got to where Dorian had described, the more obvious it became where, exactly, she was. The air hummed with her power. He knew it was hers. He knew it in a way that was hard to describe.

Cullen tried not to think about how he had never before been able to differentiate mages by how their magic felt to him. He tried not to think about how her magic wrapped around him and welcomed him closer, always _closer_ , and definitely tried not to think about how he wanted to be closer. Carefully he picked his way around stacks of molding books, careful to watch how he stepped, in case there was anything of importance there. At the same time, though, there were things to talk about and he needed to focus on anything other than how warm her magic made him feel, how Maker-blessedly _amazing_ it all was and –

“Andraste preserve me,” he whispered as he looked up into the widening room.

Aurum sat on the desk, wreathed in green, her hands held casually at shoulder height, arms extended. The fade warped around her, twisting to and fro, caressing her skin with a familiarity that made his hair stand on end. She looked so at ease in her meditation, so comfortable with the bending of the very fabric of reality that it took him overlong to realize that she was _singing_ , too.

Words he did not know poured in a glorious litany from her mouth, and if he dared allow himself to relax just the slightest bit, he could see the meaning of the words painted in the space between his mind and his eyes. He recoiled, trying to get away from the intrusion into his head, panic touching his heart at the sensation.

Aurum seemed completely unaffected, not moving from her position, not even giving any indication that she knew he was there. Cullen circled around the room, trying to stay as far away from Aurum as he picked his way around piles of books and sheaves of paper. Her eyes were burning green fire, and she did not turn to him, even as he accidentally kicked a pile of books over.

Cullen did not know if he was scared or awed by her in that moment. She was wrapped in the Fade itself, pulling it through her, sending it out around her. And she was at peace, at utter peace. No concern touched her brow, nothing seemed to bother her about what was happening around her. Aurum, in fact, looked as calm and relaxed as she had looked when she had been sleeping, curled next to him in that bale of hay. Every part of his training said that this was wrong and bad and awful, but Aurum seemed content with whatever was happening.

He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

A trained-in revulsion made him pull away when he only wanted to run his fingers through the Fade around her. He wanted to be near her, to breathe the Fade as easily and fearlessly as she did, he wanted to hold her close and feel the pulse of magic beneath her skin. He wanted to know what it was like to not be afraid of the land of dreams, to so casually wear a mantle of arcane power.

But as soon as those thoughts came to his mind, panic and fear rose up in his gut, strangling everything else out. His training –his experiences – _everything_ screamed at him that this was wrong, this was not _blood magic_ , but this was **wrong**. This was wrong and profane and it needed to stop immediately. He needed to make her stop because if anyone else had seen, if anyone else did see, they would not be as understanding as he was. She was defying all things allowed to mages by this simple act and she should be made to _stop_.

He steeled himself against the warring emotions in him, acknowledging them but forcing them into silence so he could act. Cullen reached through the shimmering green flames of the fade and grit his teeth against the howling beneath his skin.

All he needed to do was make her _stop_.

The green fire flashed a deep, dark purple, and Aurum _moved_. She was chest-to-chest with him, her eyes wide and the same purple as the mystic fire that danced around them both. No blue was hidden in her eyes any more. It was only purple.

Purple and _fury_.

“ ** _YOU WILL NOT HARM H-_** ” The voice that came from Aurum’s mouth was not her own, not one he had ever heard before, but as soon as it came, it faded, and Aurum staggered backwards away from him. “…er…Cullen? Why are you here?”

She sat down hard on the edge of the desk, fumbled for a moment, and then sagged, nearly falling from her perch. She pressed a hand to her temple and winced. Cullen stared, unmoving.

“Can you go get Solas, please? I think my meditation left me with a migraine,” Aurum sighed, curling down on herself.

Cullen said nothing. Just stared, his face white.

“Cullen…please, I need help. Solas should be close by an-”

“You were possessed. Just then.”

Aurum blinked the pain away and looked up at Cullen. He was almost as pale as milk, staring at her with shock and horror, and as bad as she felt just then, the way he was looking at her made her heart ache all the more.

“I was meditating. Deep-Fade meditations often cause warping, and it’s only exacerbated by the Anchor. I’m sorry if it startled you but that wasn’t anyth-”

“You were _possessed_. Something spoke through you.”

Aurum stared at Cullen, her heart stuttering in her chest. Traitorous, vicious feelings bubbled up in her chest, and the splitting pain in her head did nothing to allay those feelings. He looked at her as if she was diseased, as if she were truly some blighted thing, and she couldn’t help the way she nearly crumpled in utter defeat at the sight.

“I was not possessed, I’d kill myself before letting my body be made a weapon against you, or anyone else. Trust me on that. I promise you, nothing was happening. It was just mediation. Please. Get Solas.”

He shook his head, backing away from her.

“I’m _me_ , Cullen! I’m as much me as I’ve ever been, ever since I’ve known what being me is. I’m not possessed, I’m not under the influence of some spirit or demon. I am _me_ , like I have always been.”

Cullen would not meet her gaze. Her heart dropped down into her stomach. Her next words spilled out of her mouth before she could think of better ones to say.

“You don’t trust me, do you?”

She said them so softly that they came out as a near whisper. Cullen finally looked at her, his brows drawn together.

“Aurum, that’s not-”

“Or my magic. Or me with magic. You just don’t trust me. I could sit here for days, explaining how my magic works, but the moment you see me doing something you don’t understand, or can’t bring yourself to learn about, I’m _possessed_. I’m a dangerous mage outside of a Circle again and you’re the Templar trying to reign me in,” she sighed, turning away from Cullen.

The damage between them had come to a head, and they were coming apart already, so it was easy for her to pull away. He had made his choices very clear. He had made them clear and she was going to be respectful.

“It isn’t _like_ that Aurum, I sa-”

“No, it’s enough, Cullen. I’m going to go get Solas for help with this headache. Good day, Commander.”

The formality was a signal, a resignation. Aurum could not…handle this. Not now. Not today. She had only wanted time to herself. And Cullen accused her of being possessed. Accused her of being _possessed._ The worst thing that could happen to a mage, outside of Tranquility, was possession. And he just…she couldn’t handle it.

Tears stung the corners of her eyes, and she swiped them away angrily. It was easier to be angry. Easier to not pretend that she hurt and wanted to turn back and talk to him about it. Everything hurt in her chest, and no conversation worth having would happen in that room. Not while her head felt like it was being split open with a woodcutter’s axe and –

“ _No_ , Aurum, _please_. It’s not like that. I didn’t mean it like that, I’m so sorry,” Cullen said all in a rush, reaching out to catch her elbow.

She turned to him, hurt evident in the way she held herself.

“But you did, Cullen. You meant it. You meant it like you’ve meant everything else you’ve done. If you don’t want to be _with_ me, that’s _fine._ I won’t force you to do something you’re uncomfortable with. If that means that I can’t be with you, then I won’t. _You_ deserve someone who won’t make you flinch every time they try and be themselves.”

Closing her eyes, she moved away from him again, towards the door, out of the place that still hummed with the energies of the Fade.

“Aurum, wait!”

Cullen grabbed her elbow again, and pulled her back towards him harshly. Aurum stumbled into his arms and he held her there, despite her struggles to the contrary. Her struggles interrupted his passionate pleas, but he kept trying.

“Aurum, please. I didn’t mean it like that. You scared me though. I’m not used to – it’s not because I don’t _trust_ – I just want to know you’re safe and – please, Aurum, please listen – I want you, I do – I’m just trying to – I’m _sorry_.”

She stilled against him after a while, her hands reaching up to fist in his mantle, while she pressed her face into his shoulder.

“Cullen, vhenan, please. I cannot ask you to do this for me. You are so afraid of mages, so unsure of me and us, and I can’t…I can’t be this secret. I can’t be your secret. I won’t…I won’t make both of us suffer this. I can’t – I couldn’t live with myself if I forced you to live something you didn’t want. I want to be yours, and I want everything and everyone to know that I belong with you. Me, Aurum, the mage, the Inquisitor, with you and no one else.”

Her voice was muffled, weak. She trembled as he gathered her closer to him. Cullen shushed her, even though he hardly felt like he was in a position to be comforting. Dorian’s words run hollow in his head, now echoed by Aurum’s own. She was not trying to pull away from him, but what she was saying made his heart ache forlornly.

“Aurum, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I know you’re not going to lose control of your magic or be possessed, I just couldn’t – after so long, it’s still hard. I’m trying to be better at it – I _will_ get better at it, I promise, but it takes time and I’m trying, I promise you. As soon as we can, I’ll make sure everything goes the way we want it to.”

For a long while, Aurum said nothing, just wrapped her arms around Cullen’s waist and help him as tightly as he was holding her. She held so still against him, that he feared, for a moment, that she had turned into a statue. But no, she was still flesh and blood and humming magic against him, and he found comfort in that.

Slowly, she disentangled herself from his embrace, and leaned up to press a chaste kiss to his cheek. There was nothing she could do to disguise the tears that tracked down her face.

“Tell me when you are ready, then, Cullen. Until then, I…can’t.”

He blinked, and tried to remember how breathing worked. Aurum looked up at him forlornly, and then looked away. Cullen remained rooted in place as she backed away, still trying to understand what had just happened. Too much, for sure.

But all too quickly he was standing alone in the room, with the door closing behind Aurum, the barest sensation of warmth on his cheek from where she had kissed him, and the chilled remnants of her tears sliding down his own chin.

Aurum was gone. Just. Gone.

And he didn’t know if she was going to come back.


	38. The Revealing

If no one knew the state of mind Aurum was in, it was still obvious. She carried herself differently now. There was a tightness in her face, in her shoulders, that did not diminish over the days. She did not snap or change how she spoke, she did not address anyone any differently than she had done before, but there was something _undone_ in her, a deep wound that festered beneath her skin.

If asked, she deflected.

If pressed, she would leave.

Like a spring from one of Dagna’s more industrious contraptions, Aurum wound tighter and tighter. Never tight enough to snap. Never tight enough to unravel or shatter or anything. Just enough for the furrow in her brow to only grow deeper and her eyes grow colder.

But she was never rude, never spoke harshly, never did anything that could outright be pinned on any sort of mood change. She just wasn’t herself. The same way those with old injuries always seemed to know when the weather was due to change, those close to Aurum knew that something was storming on the horizon.

Sera tried to goad her into more pranks, and Aurum graciously accepted the invitation, but no laughter touched her eyes when the sound came from her mouth. Sera did her best, trying to get a smile out of Aurum, one that actually went all the way through, but it seemed that there was always something in the way. But she wanted to help, and Aurum did her best to allow the help. Lizbeth was introduced to Sera, and the two hit it of magnificently.

Aurum did not supervise their training sessions, but she would come by and watch from the side of the training yard, unassuming and nonintrusive. That was her sister, and she wanted to watch carefully, just in case anything happened. But she let Sera teach Lizbeth in the way Sera best saw fit, only interjecting when bees were being thrown around as a training idea.

The mornings, she spent with her mages, drilling them as harshly as any commander would with their soldiers. She was not unkind, but there was a definite ferocity to her drills now that had been absent beforehand. If it had not already been obvious, what she was teaching were forms meant for use in the field.

It was, perhaps, the only time Aurum showed any sort of feeling like her old self.

She stalked around the training area, her staff in hand, whipping it her trainee’s heads, shins, shoulders in equal parts to correct missteps. The staff she wielded now was much different than the typical mage’s accouterments, thinner and longer, with a needle-sharp blade at the end of it. It did not look like a Circle mage’s staff, and it wasn’t. It wasn’t, because she wasn’t a Circle mage, nor were any of the mages she was working with.

Not anymore.

* * *

“Foreclaw of the dragon!” Aurum’s voice snapped through the air as harshly as the winter’s cold that was stealing upon them again.

The mages under her tutelage snapped into the proper form, their practice staves whipping through the air. Aurum stalked around the outermost edge of the group, watching carefully. Eyes narrow, shoulders rolled forward, Aurum made an intimidating presence as she watched the purely physical exercises they were all drilling.

“Seek ground!”

The mages dropped their hands and stances low, some managing better than others. Aurum watched them all with the intensity of a predating hawk, looking for flaws in stance. She did not correct, not yet. This was a test, a trial, a way to judge who could move on to training with her in smaller groups, and who needed work still.

The trials were for her student’s sake. She was trying to be Keeper and work with them as intimately as Deshanna had worked with her. She _was_ their Keeper. There was no ambivalence about that. She was the Keeper. Their Keeper. That was her job now. That was her purpose and her pleasure in life. Inquisitor, she could stomach, but _Keeper_ , she could **relish**. She just had to have the fortitude to not - to not - to not –

She shook her head hard.

“Hold back the sky!”

They rose in concert, moving as she commanded, completing the form and then waiting on the call for the next movement. Sometimes, Aurum drilled them relentlessly, forcing them from form to form without rest, until they either called for rest themselves or worked themselves into true exhaustion. Other times, she had them hold the last step of a form for minutes on end, waiting on her command, breathless and anticipating what could be next. Still others, she drilled them with four forms at once, calling out a sequence and relying on them to follow through it.

All of this had purpose, all of this had meaning and rationale behind it. She was doing what she could to take Circle mages who had only ever fought for their lives against people who trained them to fight in the first place. Or more accurately, trained them to never fight.

But they would learn.

She would teach them.

She would teach them the things they needed to know.

They would learn.

“Bare your teeth!”

With a yell, they all dove forward, lips pulled back over blunted elvhen and human teeth. The Qunari mages _hissed_ and Aurum grinned at them. Good, it was good. They were learning. They were learning, not in leaps and bounds, but in the small subtle ways that learning should happen. Heads higher, shoulders squarer, meek voices giving over to strong. Soon they would stand for themselves, and after that, they would stand for others. There would be mages, wild and strong and as free as the Dales should have been, out in the world. Passing the Gift on, teaching and learning and teaching again all the same.

One good thing from a life of misery.

“Set the sun!”

The drill continued, not as brutal as it had been in days past, but not as slow as it had been in the beginning. These were still novices to the art of war, and though inside of them burned power that could level Thedas were there enough of them, she had much to teach them.

It was sacrilege, it was wrong, she was Dalish and they were not, but she was teaching them the magic of Lavellan as it had been preserved from the time of Arlathan. Her First was a Tevinter Altus, and he practiced alone with her in the evenings, over debates of magical theory as their cultures remembered it. His blood burned in hers, and hers in his. They were kin now, despite the yawning gap of years and fury between their people. She was doing everything wrong in order to do what she felt was right.

It was a decidedly odd feeling, but one that still brought her more joy than anything else had in recent days.

“Look at 'em, pretending to fight. Not like they'll ever be able to use it. Mages are useless in a fight.”

Aurum tensed, her grip tightening on her staff. A rage she feared to feel uncoiled in her chest.

“Rise the moon,” she grit out, putting her back to the Templar that had spoken. The Templars weren't supposed to be here. Not while the mages practiced.

A few of her trainees shrank from the presence of their once-captors, pulling out of their formation, edging further away, wanting nothing more than to be gone.They had been prisoners, and pawns, and Aurum would not stand for that any more.

Rage burned under her skin.

“Look, they flinch at the first sign of -”

Aurum signaled a hold with her free hand, and spun on the Templars, interrupting them with a snarl. There were five of them, still insisting on wearing full Templar armor. The Commander still wore his Templar bracers, so of course the few Templars who had it in their heads that mages belonged under their heels wore their full armor.

“Remove yourselves from the training area at once, recruit. I will not stand for this infringement,” Aurum snapped.

The Templars gathered flinched for the barest of moments, until their leader remembered his ego and stepped up to her.

“Like we're going to take orders from-”

One of his companions reached out to him, tugging on his shoulder, urging him to not carry on with whatever he was going to say. Aurum's rage burned brighter as the Templar tore himself away from his companion and advanced on Aurum. She straightened, her eyes narrow and her ears pinned flat against her head.

“You have no right to-”

“I am the Inquisitor. I have every right, recruit. Stand down or be put down,” Aurum snarled.

“You only got that title because you were fucking-”

“Kennick, _don't_!” one of his companions called out, rushing forward to grab his companion again, but Kennick, apparently, was not going to listen to reason.

“Fucking the _Commander_ you little rabbit-eared mage **whore**!”

The entire courtyard fell silent. No bird chirped, no child laughed and ran out from behind their mother's skirts. Kennick's voice could not have carried near far enough to make the whole world take pause, but that is what it felt like.

Blood roared in Aurum's ears. The accusation of fucking her way to her title did not get her ire raised as much as -

“ _Rabbit. Eared,_ ” Aurum repeated slowly, tasting the slur on her tongue.

 

Kennick met her stare with one of his own. He looked as if he had won, but only for a moment, because rage was leaking out of Aurum through the all the minor chinks in her emotional armor and this was edging towards _too much_ but still _not enough_.

“Tell me then, _Kennick_ , what you think of sparring a mage?”

Kennick scoffed. Aurum's grin was tight. Feral.

“So why don't you and your companions there come and see what a single mage can do.”

He laughed at her, and Aurum did her best to let the laughter roll off her shoulders as she had done so many times before. This was nothing new. The insults leading into it may be different, but she had faced Templars before. She knew what to do.

“Unless, of course, you're just looking for any reason to discredit me because _you_ lie in bed at night, consumed with the thought of mages and your fear of them. Your lust for them. Projection onto the Commander, of all people though. A new thing.”

Kennick turned red, his shame coloring his cheeks bright enough to be seen by anyone drawn in by the initial claim. Aurum let her rage burn inside, but kept her face carefully schooled into an appropriate mask of anger and indifference. Anger for the slur, indifference for the false accusation. Kennick opened his mouth to call over her, and it took nothing for Aurum to cut through his voice with her own.

“Do you consider yourself above the Commander? For a certainty, serving beneath a rabbit-eared mage must rankle. Especially when you can't keep thoughts of me from your mind at night. You were the sort of Templar who ached for magic, ached for mages, and when nothing came of your time in your Circle, when no mage approached you, bodice heaving and breathless, you sought them out. And still, rebuked.”

Aurum did not move from her position, but her voice had taken on a silken tone. Her eyes flashed dangerously, a sign of the rising magical storm in her chest. Her power already hummed in the air, more obvious now that the other mages had stopped training and stood behind her.

“So now you see a mage raised above, an apostate, a rabbit-ear, knife-eared mage, and you cannot bring yourself to understand it? Certainly I must have been thrown beneath your Commander, certainly he must have taken pity on his bedwarming whore to put me in my place? Is that it? You think Commander Cullen fucked me into his mattress, then led me to the War Table?”

Now, she advanced, standing tall despite her every instinct telling her to slink instead. A predatory advance regardless, and Kennick stood firm, his red face deepening to purple. There was a commotion from behind the group of Templars, and one stepped back to snap a sharp salute to -

“Commander Cullen!”

Aurum's gaze turned evenly from Kennick to Cullen, and her smile turned wolfish. A crowd had gathered and the training grounds were abuzz with what was being said. Rumors were coming to a head, servants with loose lips observing, waiting, watching with bated breath. Titters, whispers, all subdued just enough for no one person to be blamed for any of the noise. This was the most interesting that had happened in the day so far – the Inquisitor berating a Templar.

“Fantastic. The man of discussion. Commander, your recruit here seems to think that you are fucking the rabbit-eared whore Inquisitor. Care to comment?”

Her words did not lose their acerbic bite and Cullen stopped dead in his tracks. Aurum could have levelled him with her stare. The air was still, and no one dared to speak.

“No. I am not... _having relations_ with you, Inquisitor. Kennick, thi-”

“Thank you, Commander. You are dismissed. I believe that is all I needed to hear from you. See? No relations. There goes that theory. Now. Remove yourself from the training field and allow me to continue training my mages. Or be removed like a useless little _boy_.”

Kennick's face contorted and he drew his sword. His companions shrank from him, and Cullen shouted something. The crowd closed in, enchanted by the sudden turn, and no one was willing to make a hole for Cullen to bully through. Commands went unheeded, more men and women rushed in, all eager to see just what would happen now.

Aurum readied her staff. Kennick would have the first movement, as it would make him the aggressor.

As any Templar would, he started with a negation, trying to forbid her magic. With her mages behind her, Aurum knew that she did not have much choice than to demonstrate things she would have otherwise kept secret for longer. But her mages must learn, and the first thing to unlearn was their fear of Templars. She shrugged through the nullification, not allowing herself to conceptualize it as real. She was a _mage_ – her purpose was to deal in impossibilities.

Templars made things _real_.

Mages made things _possible_.

She spun her staff, and sparks flew around her. Kennick blanched, looking with concern upon her unadorned staff. Aurum was not going to explain how this was working or what it was that she was doing...but the courtyard saw the Inquisitor, toeing up against a Templar, using magic regardless of his intent to stop her. She had distance from him, and she used it, pulling magic from outside the negation range in as her staff danced through the invisible barrier.

She was a mage.

She was a **mage**.

Kennick faltered, shocked – too shocked to mount a defense as she charged him, her magic crackling through the air like streamers behind her. Kennick flinched as Aurum swung her staff at his head, bringing his sword up to block, but she was already moving again, twisting, spinning, and her staff swept his feet out from under him before he could remember his own training. His field faltered and Aurum's magic _roared_.

For the first time in the public of the Inquisition, Aurum let the fullest extent of her power in the Fade explode through her. The stones of Skyhold groaned, mages gasped, and the air was suddenly thick with magic. She kicked Kennick onto his back, and raised her staff's blade for what by all rights should be a killing blow against his suddenly bared throat.

There was a moment where she considered it.

He had attacked her. She was the Inquisitor. Execution was a possibility for her to enact against anyone, at any time. She had been given that power. She could use it.

But Kennick was a boy.

And she was made of firmer things.

“You are dismissed from the Inquisition, Kennick. Leave Skyhold after reporting to your superiors. I do not want you on my territory again. _Su an’banal i’ma._ ( _Void take you._ )”

Kennick merely looked at the blade held to his throat, then up to the mage holding it over him, shock and terror and fury writ into his every fiber. He had done nothing to deserve what she ached to do. So, instead, very slowly, she withdrew, stepping away, but keeping the blade of her staff in a threat position just in case.

Breathless, she turned back to her mages, smiling at them, relieved to see some of them beginning to understand just what it could mean to be a mage. No one else in the entire world mattered to her more than her mages did in that moment. Cullen could have his Templars, could have his inability to control them, could have everything he wanted because he didn't want her, and she knew that. All of Skyhold knew. He didn't want her.

But she still had her mages. She had her mages and they had her and together they were going to conquer everything that Thedas threw at them.

From behind her, she heard Kennick stand, and she turned to watch him, in case he got any manner of bright idea. She had every capability to put him down again if he -

His brothers in arm were standing now, blades naked and bared to the sun. Aurum growled, readying herself for another fight. There were five now, and she felt the ice-cold negation field wash over her again. The crowd hissed in shock, but before anything could be done about it, one of the Templars reached into the crowd and pulled a hostage forward, a blade against their neck.

“Anyone else interferes, and we'll take the kid's life first.”

Aurum blinked. Confusion now dominated her actions. His mother was sobbing, consoled ineffectively by a man.

“All this over the mages training?”

“Kennick's our brother. You're not getting rid of him like that. We'll take you on ourselves. And when we win, you're going to let him stay and step down as Inquisitor. You're a danger to everything. Training mages like that. You'll doom us all to demons. Cullen – _anyone_ who worked in a Circle will know that.”

“When I win, you won't be the same people you were in this moment,” she hissed, her eyes narrowing.

Her magic was so far behind her that no spinning of her staff could reach beyond their negation and pull magic into it. She was well and truly without her magic within their claimed territory. From behind her, she heard the grumblings of her mages, the braver ones, the ones not ever fully broken by the Chantry stepping closer, but not close enough for the other Templars to consider them a threat.

The Templars readied themselves, and almost as if it were a world away, she could hear Cullen barking orders. The nullification field muffled the outside world, trapping her in with the Templars.

Trapping them in with her.

“Hashera, with intent – Foreclaw of the dragon!” she called back over her shoulder and pointing to where the child was being helpd.

The Qunari Vashoth started for a moment before stepping to the side of the mage group and doing as Aurum had asked. The form, with intent and magic, had a vastly different effect than it did in mere training. Magic, formed by the Qunari hummed its song to Aurum and she sang it back, not with words or sound, but with inner ability and function. Fade-Singer was her name, her title, and she made use of it, pulling it close to her, wrapping herself in the unfettered magic and smashing it against the nullification field.

The force was such enough to stagger the Templars, through shock or otherwise, and Aurum abused their lapse.

Fade-Singer.

She was the Fade-Singer.

She darted forward, dropping her staff, but extending her hand out towards the nearest Templar. He readied he sword, but before he could bring it to bear, Aurum was within her own range of him. The Fade, even suppressed by the Templars was something intrinsic to the world – to the mind of every being that dreamt, remembered, hoped. The Fade lived on in memories and the feelings those memories evoked.

Only the dwarves and the Tranquil had no Fade to them.

And these were no dwarves.

_Winter at his grandmother's cabin. Cold air, snow on the ground. Cold and colder still, enough to bite at his skin and -_

That was what she needed. The memory gave her Winter.

She flashed out of sight for a moment, Fade-stepping through the memory, through the remembrance of Cold and the Fade's echoing of it, still riding Hashera's attack forward. The afflicted Templar sagged, clutching his head and groaning.

Perhaps she had not been gentle.

Perhaps he deserved no gentleness.

Aurum grabbed the child away from the Templar, not caring about the burning fire that she felt trace across her chest. She was Fade-Singer and in the moment, all there was was the Fade.

_Snowfall at Haven. Death, avalanche, death again. Frostbite and cold and it's so far away still._

She pulled the child with her, through the Fade she spun out of the Templar's memories of frost and winter. Aurum pressed the child into his mother's waiting arms and turned back to the Templars in the same disconcerting movement. There was nothing to her but the Fade in that moment. The Templars were mere bastions of power that could be used and abused as she saw fit in order to protect her Clan, her People.

 _I'm scared_.

Terror came easily at that. She threw it from her hands, feeding terror everything that she had in her. Whoever the fear had once belonged to started screaming and panicking, throwing his sword to the dusty earth and clutching at his head, trying to get the fear that wasn't even wholly his out of his head because it was clawing through him. Four still stood, circling like vultures and she still felt fire on her skin. Her chest burned fever-hot.

_Hot like the Wastes, like the fire that took my house, hot like -_

**Fire**.

It roared about her hands, and she caught one of the Templars in the chest with a strike to the sternum, her fire licking his skin, dancing across the flesh beneath his armor and then he was howling, desperate to get his armor off to extinguish the fire beneath his skin.

_Need to stop her. Can't let what happened to them happen to me. Miss my family, could've had my wife if that lightning strike hadn't spooked the horse and made -_

Memories were odd things. Two unrelated things could be related.

It didn't matter. She had lightning now. Aurum pulled it out of the memory. A bolt of lightning manifested from one Templar's mind, and she pulled it through the air to strike another in the face. Three, then two when she hissed and one's knees locked out as he fainted dead away. That was always enjoyable.

One Templar was still screaming, curled in on himself as much as his armor would allow him to.

Two Templars standing, one mage, and a shocked crowd in attendance. Aurum could sense nothing but the roar of the symphony of the Fade thundering in her ears. There was no one thing as sweet as the sound of the Fade, no one emotion or feeling or memory that could accurately portray what it was like to feel so much unlike herself and so much more like the infinity that surrounded and wormed its way through her. She could not know it, she did not care to know it, but she was wreathed in green fire, resonating a power heavy enough to set the air to vibrating.

The last Templars readied themselves, staring down at her, trying to formulate a plan to deal with this particular maleficar.

Luckily for them, their decision was made for them in rather short order.

With a string of curses in Tevene, Dorian leapt in front of Aurum, his staff alight with arcane power. From behind him, Aurum hissed anew, her head low, and eyes narrow. It seemed as if the world around her shimmered with energy and might, and as she circled wide behind her First, Dorian seemed to turn as feral as she. It was not as overt as Aurum's own transformation, but he snarled as she did, his kohl-circled eyes dark with fury.

Aurum hissed words that echoed through the Fade but had no meaning, and suddenly faced with two well-trained mages ready to do battle, the Templars quailed.

The mages she had been training – her charges, her wards, found their courage. There were two Templars, and all at once, many mages staring down at them, hands tight on weapons, and the Fade humming loud enough for even the mundane present to hear it. One sword dropped to the ground, then the other, but that was not enough. Not enough for Aurum, whose power surged around her, preparing for another battle, another strike. They threatened her and her people. They threatened with impugnity, without comprehension, and they would pay.

They would _pay_.

Their negation faltered, and Aurum pressed the advantage. Her hands lit with terror and fear, and she advanced again, circling around in front of Dorian. He reached to stop her, his mouth moving around words she could not care to hear, and she shrugged his hand off her shoulder. His skin was bloodied, and she could not understand why.

The Fade roared at her, demanding a bloodprice be paid for whoever hurt Dorian. She had no rational mind in the moment. Only the Fade. Only the Fade and its demands and madness. She was the Singer, she was the Song. The deeper she fell into the Fade the stronger hermagic was, the louder the songs of others were, and she heard the song of the Templars, the song of the lyrium that hummed in their skin. She reached and _pulled_ , warping the song beneath her hands. It was so easy, so easy so easy. The Fade came quickly to heel beneath her hands, came quickly and quicker still as she twisted the magic around.

She would show them fear.

She would show them _pain_.

There was fury and a storm and -

“Aurum, _stop!_ ”

Dorian grabbed her by her fade-touched hand and pulled her away from the Templars. She staggered, and he reached up to press a hand to her cheek.

“It's over, stop, alright?” he asked again, turning her head so she would look at him.

Aurum frowned, looking over his shoulder, but he pulled her gaze back again. Her breaths came in sharp, short pants. She still felt her chest burning like she had taken a hot poker and pressed it across her body from her sternum to her shoulder. Dorian hushed her querulous sound, and pulled her close to him.

“Calm down,” he murmured into her hair, soothing her as best he could.

The Fade diminished from her, and pain rose in its stead. She gasped softly, pulling away from Dorian and looking down. A deep gash traced across her chest and left arm, seeping a worrisome amount of blood. Her chest was warm from the blood and without her magic rushing through her, without the need for battle and protection, that...hurt.

The Templar's screaming faded, and she could hear Cullen barking for the onlookers to disperse, calling for a healer, but Aurum was surrounded by her mages, and one gently, gently, gently pressed their hand against her temple. Her body sagged, and her mind went with it, sinking down into suffocating darkness.


	39. The Recovering

She came-to slowly. In pieces. That was the best way for a mage to regain consciousness, she knew that, and had been trained to force herself to do it just like this.

The Fade came first. Of the four modalities of magic, it was her sanctuary. The first to come to her when her magic was birthed, and now, it was the first to come back as she let herself wake up. Behind her eyelids, the world painted itself in with emotions. Worry dripped, wormed, slid across everything, softening edges and sharpening curves. Not comfortable, worry. It ate away at the truth of things, making it harder to tell what was and was not really there. Aurum let it go. Worry served nothing but concern and fear. She was not worried.

She felt pain, of course she did.

But pain was not an emotion, and it was disregarded as well, even as she felt worry centered on where her pain was.

She wanted to allay the worry, but…there was a lot of pain. Even if it was not an emotion, it was felt as one in that moment, and her magic was still wild enough to not be so easily mollified and brought to heel enough to work her own skill on it.

Her left arm was cold, save for where the Anchor, as ever, burned. In the fade-sense, it cast a green light across everything in the world of unconsciousness, almost bright enough for her to see her mages without having to _see_ them. Dorian knelt at her head, his hands pressed against shoulder, his magic lit up with the alarmed red-orange of Worry. Solas was a cooler green on his own, tinted around the edges with orange as well. Hashera cradled her Anchor-touched hand, praying cool white words of Faith in Qunlat, her core divorced of worry. Hashera was wise to do that.

Aurum felt the mage she had ridden back to Haven with atop her Hart – the one touched by Sylaise – kneel down next to her, and then her chest was full to bursting with the yellow of Fire as another Dalish reached as only, it seemed, Dalish knew how to do.

Fire was not, logically, next, not for Aurum. Fire had been her last, but she had Fire now, and could feel heat. Heat and the ability to hurt and harm anything that was still an enemy in the area. But no Templars were close enough to cause her concern. Worry was not anxiety over attack. Fire was safe, surprisingly. Fade and Fire.

She was thankful for Sylaise in that moment. As Hunter and Vagabond, Aurum had not often had the moment to be with a mage who had Sylaise’s touch in her fingers. But it was welcome to feel Fire in her chest. It chased the cold away in her arm. Words whispered in the lost tongue floated on the air, and Aurum felt Dirthamen in the one the Chargers called Dalish. Her touch brought Frost.

Nearly awake now, Aurum felt more and more with every passing moment. Unconsciousness was not a negative. It was her body trying to protect her mind from the ravages of pain. Understanding this was important, because it brought comfort to muffle some of the pain. She could still feel the sharp spikes of Worry, Concern, _Fear_ that touched at the minds of others, but that sense was fading the more she awoke.

Pain dominated, though. The further she dragged herself from the comfort of the Fade itself, the further she forced herself to walk towards her physical form, the more it hurt. She tried to reach up to where the pain was, but someone gently held her right hand steady.

“The surgeon is coming soon, be still. She will be stitching the wound closed. I have already asked one of the Tranquil to bring me my own herbs. Be still, da’len. The wound goes deep. You Fade-stepped through a sword. Brave and foolish da’fen,” the mage touched by Sylaise – _Yalain_ , her name was, said.

The words hovered in the air, and Aurum relaxed on hearing them. There was something very comforting about having two of her People so nearby as she struggled with consciousness. Yalain’s touch at her neck soothed her, as did Dorian’s worried fretting in Tevene above her. Slowly, carefully, she reached up to him with her right hand, and he took her hand in his, interlacing their fingers carefully before placing a quick kiss to the back of her knuckles.

“You’ll be alright, Aurum. You will be,” he said, amost as if he could convince himself of such just on pure force of Faith alone.

She smiled, but welcomed Yalain’s warm hand sliding across her throat more than Dorian’s hollow words. He knew enough to not interfere as the other mage let her magic flow across Aurum’s skin. Dorian had to trust, as Aurum did, that this mage meant her no harm, but it was hard to trust anyone when she was laying bleeding, not out on a battlefield, but in the dirt of _Skyhold_.

“Dorian, relax,” she slurred. She could feel his anger, hot and roiling beneath his skin. “No need. I’ll be fine.”

His anger did not cool too quickly, but he settled for gently petting the back of her hand. Surrounded by mages, she felt safe. No one mundane dared come any closer, probably because of the deep purple aura of _protection_ that surrounded her. Gentle but stern, protection radiated outward from every mage who she had defended. It made her feel safe. Very safe.

Dorian did not stop his fretting, and she did not expect him to. He was her brother, and if he were in similar circumstance, it was only a difference in training that would keep her from acting the same way. The surgeon came, exuding an air of Calm around her, and with the guidance of Yalain and the one called Dalish by the Chargers, the grievous wound was stitched closed.

The needle piercing her skin stung, but Yalain had already made a salve for the wound with the help of one of the Tranquil, and the salve was one that blistered with ebrium and felandris. Her fingers smoothed the thick paste over the stitches. Aurum breathed through the jagged pain that shocked her every time the surgeon probed the wound to determine how deep it went. It was Lightning, sure. Not the best way to have it back, but it was back, and she had to handle what consciousness meant.

Yalain hushed her first pained whimper, pausing a moment to rest her fingers against Aurum’s lips. A chastisement. This was not the worst that had happened to her, or One of the People. Her pain would pass.

Aurum quieted herself, letting the pain wash over her as it was doing in sharper and sharper waves. But she did not let herself to feel it in the same way she felt everything else around her. There was a swirl of dust clinging to her cheek. Her blood was tacky against her clothes, and the surgeon’s careful touches only highlighted that feeling. Yalain was quick with the salve.

The burning sensation stopped being unpleasant and became a welcome relief. The sting came with the comforting smell of felandris, and ebrium, and despite everything she smelled telling her she was in Skyhold, she could pretend she was younger again, with a hunter’s arrow in her stomach as Deshanna chided her for getting too close to the King’s hunting party for no better reason than seeing the new King.

It had been important.

She remembered that.

The memory wrapped around her, the pain of then dulled by years and by the pain of now, and Aurum sighed. It had been a good day, that. Even with the arrow. She had taken stock of the new shem-King-who-deserved-not. She had heard of the Hero of Ferelden – the Cousland. Rightful heir to the throne by many countings, especially amongst the Dalish, especially by Clan Lavellan. Highever was not so far from where her Clan roamed in the Marches, and Aurum had watched the Teryna-to-be many times before, before her Clan was gone.

(There may be a small ironwood tree growing on the corner of the castle nearest the Free Marches, and beneath it, the swords that a small elf could gather and bury without being seen. Respect given to a Clan slaughtered.)

“Nearly done, Aurum.”

She hummed something nonsensical under her breath. It didn’t matter how long it took, not really, not anymore. She had memories of many things to reflect on. Memories from times past comforted her with the times she had hurt this bad [not adamant, not adamant, do not think of that-] but still been alright. Aurum had felt much pain in her life, so much pain. This was not the worst, not by a long stretch.

The surgeon tugged the sinew holding her wound closed tight, and the sensation was far, _far_ , from pleasant. Yalain smoothed the paste over the last stitch, sealing the wound shut for the moment. Aurum tensed as the surgeon moved to push her up to a sitting position. Yalain and Dorian both helped the movement, taking any pressure or pull off of the wound.

Carefully, the surgeon peeled away the blood-soaked cloth of her shirt to check if her back had a matching wound to the front. Aurum had, after all, fade-stepped _through_ a sword. A true through-and-through cut there on her body could mean a slow bleed on the inside that even the surgeon would have cause to be concerned over, but there was nothing to worry about, there. Once the wound was stitched up, and Aurum had had some time to try and catch her breath on her own, she’d call the War Council and make a few important decisions on the fate of the remaining Templars in Skyhold.

“Inquisitor, your necklace is broken. Here, let me-”

Aurum was awake and alert at _that_ , reaching through pain and hurt and the tearing of muscle to reach up to grab the surgeon’s hand with a snarl. Her thumb pressed into the delicate divot of tendons on the underside of the surgeon’s wrist until the woman dropped the chain. Her left hand spat green fire, crackling ominously in what was the first display of the Anchor’s latent power for many in Skyhold.

“Don’t touch it,” she snarled, her words dripping venom.

With far more agility than one with a near-mortal wound should be able to do with their off-hand, Aurum wrapped the severed chain around her fist, hiding the blood-stained and warmed coin in her palm before any gathered could see it. Why a mage from the Marches would have an Orlesian coin in her possession, let alone one wrapped in silver and hanging from her neck, she would never allow anyone to guess.

Yes, even if it meant tearing a few stitches from moving too quickly. The surgeon tutted at her, Yalain huffed, and Dorian flicked the back of her ear in chastisement.

Aurum yelped at that, jumping away from the sharp, if inconsequential pain. Whining high and plaintively, she leaned back against Dorian. Her brows were knit together and her lips pursed. He shushed her with a kiss to the offended ear and she smiled tiredly. He held her steady as Yalain smoothed the last of the herbal-smelling paste across her wound.

Her momentary inner fire cooled again, and she contented herself to lay back across her best friend and First, who toyed with her hair and soothed the ache in her body as best he could without pulling on the Fade. The surgeon, Yalain, Hashera and Dorian all knew that it would be dangerous to bring the Fade to bear with such a wound. Too soon and too quick and they could force the wound even deeper, perhaps even severing the vital things Aurum somehow managed to protect from the blade that nearly bifurcated her shoulder.

“We’ll have to talk about what you did later, you know that, Auruta?” Dorian said softly, his voice lilting over the nickname. ( _Golden bitter herb_ )

“We can talk now, Dorghein,” she said with a smile. ( _Grey-guts_ )

“Now is not the time to mock,” he huffed.

“You called me bitter.”

“You called me _grey_.”

“Could have… _sworn_ I saw a grey hair at your temple, falon’ara,” Aurum sighed, reaching up to tap the offending hair she was imagining. ( _My deepest/best/blood friend._ )

“Nostra amici, you are going to be the death of me.” ( _My own friend, closest [platonic] companion._ )

She grumbled something at him, something familial and sisterly. The words did not quite convey as much as her tone did. She was very happy to have him here, very happy to have him as her brother, and very happy she did not quite feel like she was about to die anymore.

“Let us get you stood up slowly, and back to your rooms,” Yalain suggested, pressing a hand against Aurum's wound until the Inquisitor flinched.

“Yes, mamala,” she responded without thinking, only to blush right afterwards.

“No, it is quite alright da'fen. I don't mind at all. Not many can claim to be grandmother to the Inquisitor and Herald.

“M'not Herald,” Aurum snipped petulantly, slowly getting up with the assistance of Dorian, Yalain and Hashera.

“Of course not, but appearances, da'fen.”

She grumbled at that, leaning heavily on Dorian and Hashera as she found her feet. For whatever reason, there was a smattering of...applause? as she got to her feet, as if people were congratulating her for not succumbing to her wound. Aurum did her best to wave with her hand.

The light caught off the chain she had wrapped around her fist. Matted with blood, like the rest of her, it did not draw many people's attention.

But Cullen saw.

And his heart ached as Hashera hefted Aurum into her arms and carried the Inquisitor away.

The ground was stained with _her_ blood, and for a soul-blistering moment, Cullen had felt her presence in _his_ , a screeching cacophony that burned lyrium out, only to replace it with every experience of _her_ rage. He ached all over, in the way he only ever ached on bad days of withdrawal, and even that was not enough to make him forget what he had seen.

He didn't realize his hand was pressed against the armor that protected the ring he still wore as well until he was back in his office, standing next to his desk.

Cullen stood there a long time, his mind constantly playing back what he had seen, what he had felt, everything that had happened so early in his day.

“Cullen, Ser. The Inquisitor has called a meeting of the War Council. Your presence is requested.”

The page's voice broke him out of his reverie.

“Already? Shouldn't she be resting?” he snapped, spinning on the page as if it was the poor girl's fault that the Inquisitor did not know how to stop.

“She insisted, Ser.”

* * *

The Advisors, and Morrigan stood waiting in the War Room. Josephine was frowning at her noteboard, Leliana looked liable to murder someone, and Morrigan looked like she was perfectly willing to help Leliana with that.

Cullen was just trying not to vomit. He had a migraine like nothing else he had ever had before, and his worry was not making it any better.

No one spoke.

Not even as the door opened and Dorian stepped through. He had changed into something far more severe and austere than he usually wore, his hair pulled back and slicked into place. He wore jewelry, as he ever did, but it was not the ostentatious ornamentation. No, he rather looked a ruling Magister, and when he walked in alone, head high, it was clear that no matter how far he was from Tevinter, he had still been carefully crafted by his ancestors.

“The Inquistor, Keeper of Clan Tarasyl'an Te'las has taken a grave wound. At the behest of Yalain, once-First of Clan Isthetan, she is resting. In her place, I will serve,” Dorian said flatly, looking up to meet each Advisor's gaze in turn. “I am her First, and for her People, this means much.”

“This will cause problems, Dorian,” Josephine said softly. Her objection was one of necessity, not actual disagreement.

“I think the more pressing problem is that Aurum was nearly killed today. Not by assassins, not by any agent of Corypheus, but by the Templars we have been assured, time and again, could serve beneath a mage. But they attacked her. Took a _child_ as hostage. Decorum has already broken down, and I will not stand for this happening again.”

Dorian had none of the problems Aurum had once had in her same position. He spoke coolly, with authority that he carried well across his shoulders.

“At the Inquisitor's behest, Knight-Captain Rylen will be recalled to Skyhold. She wishes to talk with him about the state of the Templars and what best to be done. A raven has already been sent. Knight-Captain Rylen should be present within three days to answer for what his men have done.”

Cullen opened his mouth to interject, but Dorian cut him off before he even had the chance, raising a hand to stop Cullen's words.

“The Inquisitor will speak with you, personally on the matter, Commander Rutherford, after this meeting is concluded.”

He blinked, reaching for his sword to hold himself still. Cullen did not know what to make of this, but Dorian was already moving on.

“She requests that the mages on this list,” he said, pulling a sheaf of paper, sealed with Aurum's own signet and handing it to Leliana to break, “Be added into the active duty alongside the other soldiers. Once recovered, she will be leading a group of mages to break Suledin Keep of the Red Templar's control, and would like those ready to see battle to see minor skirmishes and acclimate to the field.”

Cullen's mouth gaped, as did Leliana's, but Josephine grinned.

“An astute idea, truly,” Josephine said, bending to write notes. “Have the mages and men work together, in the wake of what's happened to the Inquisitor. It won't be popular with many of the noblity, but if we keep the knowledge contained, we may end up putting more families at ease, and cease the fear of Templars attacking anyone with any manner of magic.”

Dorian nodded.

“That is the Keeper's hope. She also asks that missives be sent out through Leliana's network that any mages are welcome to find a home with the Inquisition. Note well that no a single one will be expected to fight. We simply offer them safe haven, and jobs if they wish for it.”

“Skyhold is-”

“We do not anticipate a massive influx right away, Commander. Keeper Aurum also asks similar messages be sent to the alienages in Orlais, Ferelden and the Marches, letting the elvhen there know that if they wish it, they are welcome to come to Skyhold to start a family. We need more craftsmen, artisans, butchers, the like. We offer them a place outside of the alienage to live, free from the fear of a nobleman's torch or blade for merely having pointed ears.”

Leliana nodded, and Josephine's grin was wide.

“The nobility won't have any choice in saying no, not truly. The elves there live in squalor. In fact, I rather think that many will see the elves leaving as a good thing, as long as their servant class isn't immediately injured.”

Dorian nodded.

“It will send a message. The Inquisition is not going to stand for any sort of undue opression. Anywhere. And anyone who wants protection from the horrors of the outside, or who wishes to help us, is welcome. If word could be sent to the other Dalish Clans, the Avvar, and the Chasind, that would be appreciated as well, though Keeper Aurum does understand if they cannot be reached.”

Josephine nodded, Leliana's smile was tight over her teeth, and Morrigan was privately impressed. Cullen stood, watching, silently suffering through a migraine that made him feel like gritting his teeth until they popped. Dorian handled the few questions posed to him from the others gracefully, standing tall and regally in the spot Aurum usually took as if he belonged there.

When the meeting was over, Dorian inclined his graciously to each of them in turn.

“Commander Rutherford, she will speak to you. Once-First Yalain should be at the stairs to her rooms with information on how she is doing. Do try not to tax her overmuch. I must tend to her mages, and assure them that today will not have a repeat.”

With that, he offered them all one final, formal, bow, and exited, sweeping out of the room just as majestically as he had entered.

* * *

“Commander Rutherford. She is expecting you.”

Yalain spoke before he was even halfway to Aurum's rooms, closing the heavy wooden door behind her and standing in wait for Cullen to make it up the stairs.

“She is very tired, and will not be able to rise to meet you. It is not rudeness. She was badly injured.”

 _Why does everyone insist upon telling me that,_ he thought, trying to hide the way his headache and emotions were wearing him thin. _I saw her bleeding. Worse than Adamant. She was supposed to be safe here. She was supposed to be **safe** here._

“I...know. I saw what happened,” he finally said as he stepped up onto the landing with Yalain.

The elvhen woman regarded him evenly.

“Did you? Odd then, that your Templars still attacked, knowing you were present. I would have thought that the presence of their Commander would have been enough to dissuade them from attacking their Superior. But, I suppose not.”

He took the chastisement for what it was, not ducking his head or averting his gaze from Yalain. She returned his stare.

“It won't happen again,” Cullen offered when the silence stretched uncomfortably long.

Yalain's ears twitched at that, and even his familiarity with Aurum could not let him parse the gesture one way or another.

“Quite right.”

With that, the elder woman brushed past him, leaving him standing on the landing, alone. He took a moment, a long one, to collect himself, trying to tamp down everything rising in his gut so that he could meet Aurum – the _Inquisitor_ one what was very nearly her deathbed.

His breath shook in his chest, and his hands trembled as he reached for the door.

The door opened when he pushed, on freshly oiled hinges, so as not to irritate Aurum, he was certain. He did not call out to her immediately, trying to figure what he should say to his leader as he walked up her stairs.

“Dorian?” she said softly, turning to the person coming up the stairs. “Did the meeting go-”

Cullen stared. She was dressing herself slowly, halfway into a clean pair of trousers, struggling with having to do it one-handed. He could _see_ the gash across her chest, the spreading bruise, the blood-tracks that spread fresh crimson across her chest – her _bare_ chest.

Aurum stared back, not trying to cover her breasts. He had seen them before, and it hurt to try and wear a breast band with her wound where it was.

“Commander. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

 


	40. The Newcomer

Cullen stared at her for a moment too long, and Aurum hissed at him, turning her head sharply, her ears flaring out from her head.

“What is it you _want,_ Cullen?” she snapped, not looking him in the eye as she stood there.

“Dorian…Yalain. They both said you wanted to talk to me.”

Aurum’s lips curled up, and she made a quickly-aborted movement, trying to wave him away, but failing. With a bit-back curse, she curled down, reaching up to press her right hand against the wound. It had stopped bleeding, but that did not make it any more comfortable by any stretch of the term. It _hurt_ and her heart _hurt_ and she just wanted to be _alone_.

“No, they both think I should talk to you. The two are very different.”

She wasn’t pleased with this turn of events, not by any stretch. This was a betrayal of sorts, and her day had been rough enough without now having to deal with her heart ache on top of it all.

“I’ll just be…” Cullen started, staring at her wound, his migraine twisting around his worry.

Going, he was going to say. _Going_. He was going. He was going to leave. Not walk forward. Not advance on Aurum. He wasn’t supposed to be doing that, but he was. He was, because she had been bleeding, she had nearly died and he had just watched. He had watched and now he had to look. This wasn’t Adamant, this wasn’t somewhere in the field. This had happened on his watch, and he had felt her magic roaring in his ears.

Aurum stiffened as he approached, flinching away from him when he lifted his hand to her.

That movement, one he had seen thousands of times in Kirkwall, in Kinloch, when elder Templars would approach their “favored” mages. It was the same instinctive lift of the shoulders and jerk of the head that had him backpedalling away from her faster than he thought he could move with such a horrible headache. That flinch made everything in his world wilt and sicken, and his nausea came back in full force. He stared at her, mouth agape, heart thundering in his chest. She couldn’t think of him like that, could she?

“I-I didn’t…Aurum, I didn’t. I _didn’t_ \- not like that,” he tried to explain, backing away still, panicked and breathing harshly.

“Of _course_ not, serah Templar,” she spat, turning away from him, reaching for a robe that Yalain had put out for her use.

His rage was roused at that word, that title, and he turned back on her, a curse on his lips. She had a knife in her right hand, and when he stepped forward, the knife came up. The robe on her shoulders did nothing to cover her bare chest, or the blood that still painted her skin, but she did not shy away from her threat.

“I am _not_ a Templar!” he cried, pain coloring his voice as he saw how willing she was to fight against him.

“You wear their armor, you didn’t stop them from hurting me – you don’t trust me with my magic! What do you _want_ me think?”

“It isn’t the same!”

She snarled, the knife rising higher as his anger colored his cheeks. Her hands shook, and while the threat was nearly toothless because there was no way she had enough energy or strength to actually attack, she was not going to back down. It was a threat, and it was one she meant. She didn’t want…she didn’t want to be afraid of him but he was armored and armed and she was not.

“HOW. _HOW_ is it different?!”

Cullen fumbled for words around his fury, trying to put everything in his heart into something that wasn’t just screaming, but Aurum wouldn’t give him the time.

“You wear their armor, you follow their tenements, you can’t trust the mages - you _refuse_ to trust me or my magic – you just - you just stopped taking lyrium and expected that to fix what happened! How are you different from them? **_HOW?!_** ”

His headache grew ever more insistent behind his eyes, and Cullen clutched at his forehead, averting his eyes from Aurum. Too many emotions warred in his mind, too many words tried to crowd out of his mouth all at once and it was overwhelming. He tried to find peace, find space, find a point of reference within himself to come back from because whenever he looked at her, he didn’t see the knife in her hand, but the wicked wound cutting through her shoulder. He saw hurt and pain and he knew she was…right. In some ways.

But that didn’t help.

Because he _wasn’t_ a Templar.

“Because I…because I – am here,” he shot back with, not caring that the thought was hardly thought completely through.

“Here? _Here_?” she snapped.

“I wouldn’t…you’re a mage, Aurum. I’m here for…you. I’m- this isn’t easy for me.”

“Isn’t easy for _you_ , Cullen? In your armor, with your sword, alone, with a mage unable to use magic? Creators, how difficult must it be to have all the power in the room, how hard can it be on you to know that at any moment if you said that you thought I was **possessed** no one person in Thedas would ever accuse you of _murdering_ me if you took that big shiny sword and swung? How _awful._ ”

Her tone was scathing, and Cullen stepped away from her as if she was summoning her magic to strike against him, even in that moment. They stared at the other, ready to fight, the battle-song rising between them, making the air thick with tension.

For a long moment, the two regarded each other, each warring with their own pasts and mental issues with their day. One of them would have to flinch before this could be resolved. Aurum moved first, throwing her knife away from her, hissing and shaking her head. A shudder wracked through her, and she reached up to press a hand against the horrendous wound on her shoulder.

“I can’t. I can’t do this. I can’t, Cullen.”

This time, her voice was soft. The anger that had risen so quickly in her gut faded just as fast in the face of pain and exhaustion. Anger was a hard emotion to hold onto when you were so close to death and didn’t really want to fight to begin with. This was Cullen and her heart ached. She didn’t want to be mad at him, but she was. She was and that hurt her as much as her shoulder did. They were too different but that didn’t stop her from _wanting_ in a way so acute and harsh that it left her gasping.

Her head bowed and she turned away, fumbling to find something to help her support herself. Without her fury and rage and adrenaline, she had nothing to keep her upright. She caught herself on the bedpost closest to her, clutching it tight.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t…talk like that. Not to you. Not to anyone. Unbefitting. I just…”

As gently as she could, she rested her head against the bedpost. She didn’t want this to continue. All the anger bled out of her and it left her with nothing more than pain in her heart and body. Without the heat of anger, chills wracked her and she trembled.

“Aurum…”

She curled away from his voice, closing her eyes against the harsh burn of tears.

“Please, Cullen. Go.”

“ _Aurum_ ,” he tried again, but she turned further from him. “Aurum, please, I’m sorry. For everything.”

She shook her head, and did not turn to look at him.

“Go away.”

His anger gave way to sorrow and frustration. For a moment, however shocking and upsetting it had been, Aurum had been open and forthcoming with her concerns. She had let herself bleed out in her words and he had had the chance to see the maelstrom in her. He had felt it earlier, when her magic had burned in place of lyrium in his blood, but now she was closing up again, putting walls up that kept her from speaking her mind to him and he just wanted to _know_ because they had been _together_ and now she wasn’t even looking at him.

“Why were you wearing the coin?”

The words came out in a rush.

She trembled, and shook her head.

“I…you gave it to me. Do you want it back, then?” she said bitterly.

“ _No_. No. I don’t…did you want the ring back?”

Cullen reached for the necklace he wore, but Aurum quickly waved him off.

“I gave it to you. I can’t take it back. I don’t want to take it back. It’s yours now. I gave it freely.”

Cullen sighed, looking to the side table by her bed where the broken chain lay, the blood smeared coin resting atop the broken chain. Aurum didn’t move, not even as she heard him walk to where his coin lay.

“I’m…sorry. Aurum. I am so sorry. I never meant for this. I didn’t…I don’t want it to happen again. I never want you to be hurt like that again. Not by anyone. Not here, not anywhere. I-” he stammered, his words failing him. “I care for you, Aurum. Still. After all this.”

“I-I-”

It was Aurum’s turn to stutter over her words, to feel the blooming of hope in her chest again, to feel wants and desires she knew were better left alone. She dared not turn to look at Cullen, she could feel his eyes on her back, and the air was singing around them again. It beckoned her turn, go to him, lay your heart bare, listen and learn, let go of the past. It called for her to curl herself into his arms and never let him go, to weather trial and tribulation with him because he was -

“Aurum? Is everything okay?”

Dorian’s voice broke the moment, and Aurum exhaled heavily.

“I need help, Dorian,” she called back, turning to the door. “My arm hurts and I’m cold. Did Yalain have you bring anything for me?”

She ignored Cullen and the way he looked at her in that moment, ignored how her heart ached for him and looked to Dorian.

Dorian looked at Cullen first, his brows furrowed. He looked to Aurum next, confused. This was not what he had expected. They were…not meant to be standing so far apart, looking at each other like they wanted nothing more than to get away from each other. He moved to Aurum’s side, trying to support his sister as best he could.

Cullen shirked his outermost layer. He had draped it over her when they were taking refuge in that cave after the avalanche, and despite everything else, he still wanted to comfort her. Her bed was right there, and there were blankets aplenty for her to find warmth from, but when he offered the mantle to her, she took it and Dorian helped her drape it over her shoulders.

“Heal well and rest, Aurum. I…hope you recover soon,” Cullen said firmly, trying to find his stern voice again.

She nodded, blinking quickly and turning away. Dorian gathered her gently into his arms and bent his head to hers to offer more comfort. Cullen left her room, the pain in his heart and head following him around for the remaining day…and for days after.

* * *

Rylen was late.

By two days. He had sent a raven, saying he had met up with the Chargers and was assisting with the efforts to clear out Haven’s wreckage before the snowfall got too deep again. Krem had insisted that it needed to be done, and Aurum had agreed. It was the only thing she could think of doing to keep the Chargers entertained for a while while she recovered. There was nothing worse than having too many people too concerned for her.

Even if she still wore Tevinter-styled clothing for the open shoulder it provided her and her still-healing wound, she did not need everyone coddling her. It had been five days, and after the third, Yalain had proclaimed the wound stable enough to have healing magics cast on it. The wound was still slow to heal, and while it no longer needed stitches, it was an ugly thing – gnarled and twisted and an angry shade of red.

Aurum had to spend hours every morning beneath the hands of the healing mages as they worked on slowly fixing what the sword had done to her. It wasn’t pleasant, or comfortable, and it only made her crankier.

So waiting for the arrival of a Templar she was already upset with only made her crankier.

But the scouts had said that the Chargers and Rylen were on their way back, mere hours away, and so Aurum was standing, and waiting. Dorian had helped her dress that morning, assisting with the buckles and straps that she still had trouble with. Her left arm was still weakened from what had happened, and Dorian’s help was invaluable. It would take her a long while to rebuild the strength in her arm after what had happened.

Still, she cut an intimidating figure as she stood at the huge portcullis awaiting the Chargers and Rylen. Dorian stood at her side, ready and able to help her if she needed it. She did not anticipate needing help, but it was always soothing to have someone there for her.

The Chargers came up over the hill, and Aurum straightened her back and waited.

Rylen walked at the back of the Chargers, his pack high on his shoulders, and when he saw her, he blinked, stopped, and took his pack down. Aurum did not move, holding still and proud, waiting for Rylen’s approach.

“Messere Inquisitor,” Rylen started, his Marcher accent making the deference sound all the sweeter.

“Serah Rylen.”

“I must needs speak with you in regards to the actions of my men, Messere.”

“Quite.”

Her words were brusque and to the point, as would be expected of someone of her rank over his.

“Is there somewhere we can speak, Messere?”

“Here is good. I am not accustomed to being made to wait, Serah.”

“I thought it better to bring a gift.”

Aurum’s eyebrows lifted high on her brow.

“Do tell.”

This was all very Marcher, and the both of them knew very well what was happening. He was subordinate to her, and his men had done her wrong. Her rank and the nature of the offense against her only widened the gap of what was acceptable as per Marcher customaries.

He pulled something from his pack and presented it to her.

“That is my cloak.”

“Aye.”

She flipped the cloak open and laughed.

“You fetched my pipe from Haven, Serah?”

“Such a thing would be sad to lose. I know your people value them near as high as mine own.”

Rylen still smiled, averting his eyes from her, but waiting for her to accept the gift he had brought. Aurum considered the pipe for a while before shaking her head and taking the whole bundle from his hands.

“Do you smoke, Serah?”

“With, and for you, Messere, of course.”

* * *

They had relocated to the garden, and Aurum had picked some elfroot for the smoking. She had ordered the gardens emptied so that she and Rylen could speak without being overheard, but that did not keep them from being watched. Slowly, slowly, the two of them hashed out what had happened five days prior.

From far above, Cullen watched, biting his lip as Aurum and Rylen moved closer together, sharing the same pipe and talking animatedly. Cullen had hardly had the chance to talk to Aurum at all since their blow up in her room all those days ago, and while she and Dorian still made joint appearances at the War Table, it seemed as if she was, again, perfectly content to ignore him.

Even if he strained to listen to what they were saying, they were speaking in the broken mutt language of the Free Marches – an indistinguishable mix of the worst of the medley of languages spoken throughout the Free Cities. Throughout his time in Kirkwall, he had never really managed the rhythm of the native’s trade language to a point where he could follow conversations around him with ease.

Aurum and Rylen did not have that problem, and around the fragrant smoke of elfroot, they talked.

And talked.

And talked.

Cullen eventually, was called away, to do his job, to act as Commander, but there was a nagging sense that would not leave him, no matter how hard he tried to focus on his work for the rest of the day, and the days that followed.

If he saw Rylen, Aurum was next to him. If he saw Aurum, Rylen was not far behind. They sparred together, talked together, and Rylen was even given the honor of being the first Templar she allowed to train with her mages in the mornings. Cullen still had to watch from a good distance away as Aurum drilled the mages who had not been sent out into active duty, and Rylen followed along as best he could.

* * *

He was not…sulking, per se, but he was definitely not wanting to see anyone else right now. He was in the Herald’s Rest’s upper level, nursing what was probably a bad decision’s worth of ale, trying not to hear Aurum and Rylen chatting down below. It had gotten to the point that even the sound of their Marcher Trade-speak was enough to trigger a migraine, and he was –

“Here you are, Curly.”

Varric’s voice broke through his introspection and with a half-felt sneer, Cullen looked up to the dwarf.

“Any reason you’re so surly these past few days?”

“Varric. Not. Now,” Cullen growled. For anyone other than the dwarf, it would have been a clear warning that the Commander was not in a mood to handle any sort of chicanery.

“Couldn’t have anything to do with them two down below, right?” Varric said with a wry grin and an arch of a single eyebrow.

Almost as if on cue, Aurum’s laugh broke through the hubbub of the tavern, and Cullen nearly broke the handle off of his mug.

“Green really isn’t your color, Commander.”

“It isn’t _like_ that at all, dwarf.”

“Really, now? You’ve certainly been staring daggers at the Knight-Captain for a while now.”

Cullen snarled.

“I am not _jealous_ of the attention Aurum’s giving Rylen, Varric.”

Cullen angrily downed the rest of his drink and made to stand. He didn’t have to listen to this. Varric was wrong, because he wasn’t _jealous_ of _anything_.

“No one suggested that, save for you.”

Varric sat at the table, and pressed another mug of ale into his hand.

“But you should maybe talk about it, hm? Why does it bother you?”

“I’m _not_ bothered!”

“You’ve nearly broke that cup, you’re so not bothered, am I right?”

Cullen could feel his teeth grinding. His jaw ached and not even the muzzy haze of alcohol was enough to relax him as he had hoped it would. Not nearly enough because he could hear her laughing, and hear Rylen laughing and no amount of measured breaths could slake the fire that burned in his chest at the sound. It had been days again since Rylen had come back to Skyhold – nearing a whole month now and he hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Aurum without Rylen not far behind. He hadn’t been able to talk with her, or see her, or try and resolve anything from what had happened and now…and _now_.

“She’s going to Suledin Keep. Taking Rylen, a small contingent of soldiers – no Templars – and the rest of her godsdamned _mages_.”

“Sounds like a good enough task force if you ask me, really.”

The muscles in Cullen’s neck corded tight enough to near snap and he snapped at Varric.

“She’s not letting me come with her! She’s not taking **anyone** from the inner circle, only these half-tested mages! How does she expect me – or _anyone_ to be okay with that?! Dorian’s not even raising a fuss, No one seems even the slightest bit concerned, no one seems to even _care_ that she’s throwing herself into a massive engagement without any manner of _competent_ backup!”

Varric was too good at this, too good at needling in just the right way to get things to pour out of someone.

_Fucking authors_ , Cullen thought traitorously, scrubbing at his face. Stubble rasped his palm. He’d been so…caught up in what was happening that he’d forgotten to shave. For the past handful of days.

“She took Caer Branoch with Bull, Vivienne and Cole alone. And that was after fighting a dragon.”

“She fought a **_dragon_** in Crestwood?!” Cullen snapped.

He had only been told about the one dragon. Varric winced.

“Now, ah, you didn’t hear that from me.”

“How many other dragons has she fought, Varric?”

“A few.”

“A _few_.”

“Yes.”

Cullen snarled and slammed his drink down. Beer sloshed over his hand and he turned on Varric.

“And no one told me because?”

“It wasn’t important. Still isn’t. We’ve always come out fine, and she is doing it to protect people. We’ve not had any issue and she’s always come back safe.”

Of course it was important, but Cullen was already having trouble with finding the words he wanted, the alcohol wasn’t helping and neither was the migraine throbbing behind his eyes still. Why was it that Aurum kept such secrets from him? How hard would it have been for her to just _tell him_ that she was doing something so outrageously unsafe?

“She shouldn’t be doing that. She should be staying safe, out of danger.”

“You know she can’t do that. She’s the Inquisitor. It’s her job – the one you and the advisors gave her. She has to go out and kill dragons, save people. If she doesn’t the Inquisition loses face. And there’s no safe way to kill a dragon.”

She laughed again, and Rylen’s answering chuckle made Cullen’s heart hurt.

“Don’t begrudge her laughter, Curly. She’s not laughed near this much in too long. Let her be happy.”

And that was apparently all the conversation Varric had for Cullen. The dwarf left him sitting alone, listening to Aurum and Rylen talk, laugh, and the tavern laugh with them. Not too long later, he heard Varric’s own voice join in in the Marcher trade-tongue. His world swam when he stood, and on unsteady feet he stumbled up the stairs that joined the Herald’s Rest to the battlements and staggered back to his Tower.

Somewhere along the way, Cole appeared to hold him steady. Usually, the spirit-boy unnerved him, but in that moment, he was just happy for the stability of another body against his. Cole helped him all the way up to his loft, assisting as best he could as Cullen got out of his armor and mantle.

The spirit said hardly anything at all, doing his best to assist with the migraine and inebriation as only he could. Cullen had had much time to get more accustomed to Cole, and did not mind the spirit-boy acting as a page. It was a help, and a great one in this moment. He mumbled his thanks as Cole pressed the mantle he had removed back into his hands, pushing the furs up against his face and bidding him to breathe deeply.

Aurum had returned the mantle the day after he had given it to her, and despite everything in the times between then and now, Cullen still swore it smelled of her. He held onto it, even as Cole helped him into bed. He truly had had too much to drink, but when he awoke in the morning, he saw a glass of water by the bed and he could only half-remember what Cole had been saying before he had slipped into slumber.

_“She gave it freely and it is only with you. Only ever you. The words she whispered were never false. Never, not once false. It is yours and only yours.”_

He had forgotten it by the time he had dressed and reported to the War Council, only to find Aurum had left a day earlier than expected and neither Josephine nor Leliana saw any pressing wrongness about this.

It took him moments to decide. Even with the morning’s advance, even with his earliest departure from Skyhold not possible until later that afternoon –

Cullen was not going to let Aurum assault a Keep alone.

He had to protect her.


	41. A Hawk's Eyes

Her breath frosted the air. They were but halfway through the keep, and holding well together. Her mages had only taken minor injuries and the soldiers with them had provided the small amount of support she had needed from them. Rylen commanded the mundane, she commanded the mages, and they were working ferociously through the opposition the red templars and their cohorts presented.

She was not quite out of breath, not really. But it was tiring, all this fighting. She blinked, shaking snow out of her eyes. Aurum was still recovering, and her left arm, while stronger than it had been previously, it still was not as strong as it had been.

So she had been trying to take it easy on herself. Trying to go slow, trying to pace herself. She tired easier now, and her left arm ache something fierce. Yalain and the surgeon both had chided her, saying that the scar would need to be stretched out over a long time, and that moving to hard or too fast could rip the scar open.

Aurum tried, and she tried something fierce to listen to that. It burned her to watch her mages fight and not be able to jump in with them. She had to stand towards the back, calling out and commanding without being capable of closing distance herself. It rankled, but her mages were handling things as best they could.

There could not be too much further to go.

Michel had spoke of a demon named Imshael (the name sounded familiar, but despite the tickling at the back of her mind, she could not place it) stalking the upper reaches of the keep, and while her mages had fought their fair number of demons, the way the chevalier spoke of this particular demon made Aurum’s hair stand on end. Even now, she could feel the presence of the demon, lurking around the edges of the Fade as her mages fought. Whatever manner of demon it was, it was a powerful one. She needed to save her strength for that battle.

She had no need to handle an abomination that day. She would not lose her women or men to a demon. Not today, not any day. She was their Keeper and that title _meant_ something profound to her.

“Messere, shall we push on?”

Rylen’s voice broke through her thoughts, and shaking her head, Aurum turned to him.

“Serah, we can rather stop with all that. It’s just Aurum. But yes, push on. Hashera, mind your barriers. Not everyone can throw a templar as far as you can, and you need to mind the ones behind you.”

“Yes, Keeper,” Hashera called as she moved forward.

Aurum stayed where she was, still trying to catch her breath in the thin Emprise du Lion air. It was so different than the betimes muggy air of the Marches and every so often, that would catch up to her.

The demon’s presence still hovered at the edges of her awareness, and she knew that some of her mages felt it as well. There was a fight brewing on their horizon, perhaps one more strenuous than all of the red Templars in the Keep could ever be, even with their corrupted giants. Her mages were brave and strong, toughened by their service with the soldiers in the weeks prior. They would handle it, and she would help them.

“ _Inquisitor!_ ”

“Oh no...” she whispered, hoping against hope that it wasn’t – “ _Cullen!?_ ”

He rode up behind her, unaccompanied. A flush was high on his cheeks and his eyes were cold. With her subordinates and his soldiers in attendance she could not eviscerate him as she wanted, but panic touched her. He couldn’t _be here_. This was not a good place for him, not now, not ever. She held a hand to him, stopping him in his tracks as she tried to think her way out of this. He dismounted easily, handing the reins off to the nearest soldier and moving forward to stand near Aurum.

“Move on ahead. I will follow behind with the Commander.”

Hashera and Rylen both stared at her, eyes narrowed. She did not back down and shooed them along with her staff-hand. Reluctantly, they left, and she waited until they were all of them, out of ear shot, leaving her standing alone with Cullen.

She waited a heartbeat longer before spinning on him, only just barely remembering that if she shouted, it would echo in the Fade and perhaps draw the demon closer. She had to maintain control, for her sake and his, but –

“You are not supposed to be here, Commander Rutherford,” she bit out sharply.

“I was going to bring additional men to bolster the efforts, but they were needed to elsewhere in the Emprise.”

He had the gall to look sheepish, as if that was the reasoning for her anger – him arriving alone and unescorted to the engagement. Aurum felt the embers of rage burn hotter in her chest, and had to bite her tongue before proceeding. There was a demon _somewhere_ , and red lyrium everywhere, and here was Commander Cullen Stanton _Fucking_ Rutherford rubbing the back of his neck because he showed up late to the fight without fresh men.

“No, Cullen, that isn’t what I meant. You, specifically, are not meant to be here. We need to get you back to the main camp and have you on the way back to Skyhold.”

He blinked, clearly taken aback.

Rage was a hot poker searing a hole through her left eye. How could he be so fucking _dense_?! How could he do this, how he keep doing this to her? He kept saying one thing, doing another, and explaining it a third way. But when she had something to explain, when she had something to show, to tell, to express, he never gave her any way to really explain herself. So many things that she had just been biting down on because she was surrounded by shemlen mother _fuckers_.

“Cullen, the Emprise is _riddled_ with huge fucking spires of red lyrium. **You** can’t be here, you shouldn’t be here, and you should have _trusted_ me when I said I had this under control!”

His mouth opened, some manner of protestation on his lips, but Aurum didn’t want to hear it. She had been trying to do the best she could do because everything relied on her and no one else, and no one seemed to understand that she was not the same thing as they were. She was Dalish, she was Elvhen, she was a mage and none of them even knew, or could comprehend what that meant. No on in her Inner Circle, and certainly not a single one of her Advisors could know.

“Again, _fucking again_ , you can’t just leave it be, you have to come after me, to make sure I’m not doing something _you_ find abhorrent? How many times, Cullen? How many times? How much longer are you going to _do this_ to me?!”

The rage wasn’t even hers anymore. It was a maelstrom of fire behind her teeth and the only way to let it out – the only way to feel better was to let it bleed out of her. Whatever she let out was replaced twice over. She burned as hot as a funeral pyre, and twice as bright, and there was nothing that would satisfy her fury except for Cullen.

“Until you understand that I’m just trying to _protect you_ , Aurum!” he screamed back, his own anger quick to rise. “You can’t just keep doing this, you’re going to kill yourself, and I’m not going to step aside while you try!”

“I don't need you to protect me! I'm the Inquisitor, I'm a mage, I don't need some nannering ex-Templar following me around, shadowing my every step, not giving me a moment to myself, to breathe, not trusting me to manage this on my own, but still expecting me to do _everything_ by myself!”

Cullen snarled.

“I want to make sure you don't get possessed, I want to keep you _safe_!”

_Possession._

Too much made sense too fast and she recoiled from him, throwing her hand out and pushing the Fade into a solid wall between herself and Cullen. The barrier was tinged blue and purple and from the other side of it, Cullen stared at her, a cursing litany falling from his lips.

“Oh, you figured it out so _soon_? I had hoped for more time to play with you.”

Aurum stiffened, dropping her hands down and turning slightly. Rage still burned in her chest, but she could feel the demon feeding the emotion, and did her best to unwind the feeling from her heart. It would do her no good.

“Oh, come now, come noooow, Inquisitor Aurum. No need for that. Feel your emotions. They're so strong. So very strong,” the demon purred.

Cullen's eyes were wide and he reached forward to push against the barrier. His rage gave way to a rising panic.

Aurum was still as the demon advanced. He was wearing the form of a passing attractive human man, with eyes that glittered like rubies. She felt the tugging at her emotions, the tell-tale pull of a demon powerful enough to manipulate feelings to their advantage. She took a deep, cleansing breath, pulling the cold of the winter's air deep into her lungs and holding it there until she felt her rage cool. This demon was not one to underestimate. It was too strong to do anything but defend herself until an opportunity to do more presented itself.

“You have my name, but I have yet to have the honor of yours, ser.”

No point in being rude, not really. Politeness in the face of demons was something that could work in her favor more than not.

“Call me...Imshael. I believe your kind called mine the “Forbidden Ones”, a truly inane name, but one that we've come to revel in in the times since your kind existed on the wrong side of the veil.”

Her stomach dropped. She _remembered_.

“Oh, you know the name? You fear it, do you?”

“One of the first Desire demons? I would be rather the fool to not be.”

She couldn't hear Cullen. The barrier she had thrown behind her muffled the sounds he made, but Cullen was having a fit behind the barrier, panic and fear and rage blending together into one massive emotional outburst. He was trapped, behind a barrier, as someone he cared deeply about was tempted and he could do nothing to save them. The barrier held strong, no matter how he beat on it.

He was forced to watch as Imshael drew closer to Aurum, reached for her, whispered words of temptation at her. He could not hear what was being said, not quite then, but this was too similar to everything that had happened before, and he was trapped again. Not strong enough to Dispel her barrier, not strong enough to kill the demon that circled her, not strong enough and not brave enough to do anything of note.

“Oh, you brought a defanged Templar along? Well come on, let him _play_.”

The demon clearly did not have any problem speaking through the barrier, and when Imshael turned to Cullen, a grin on his face, Cullen forgot himself for a moment. He was not the Commander of the Inquisition in that moment, but a young man trapped in a Tower again, staring down demons and abominations. Only this time the mage wasn't one he had sworn to protect in the capacity as her captor, but one he had sworn to protect as a lover.

That time was long ago but -

“He was your lover, elfling? How quaint. Was it him who sought you out? I know the Templars have dark desires for their mages, and the humans love breeding the elves they carry under their thumb, but you went willingly. Do tell, what does that say about you?”

Cullen saw Aurum's teeth bared in a snarl, and then Imshael was back focused on her.

“Don't pretend little mage, it's quite alright. Desire and Choice are all very good things, and you chose quite well. Did you want him still?”

She bit her tongue, refusing to answer.

The demon clucked his tongue at her silence, reaching out to grab her by the chin. Aurum tried to jerk her head away as she felt the pressure of the demon's influence on her mind again, but Imshael held her still.

“That isn't how the game is played, elfling. Answer my questions, play my game, and I will give you anything you desire. Refuse, and I will destroy you and he both if it pleases me.”

Aurum tasted blood in her mouth from biting her tongue, and before the demon could recognize what had happened, she spat it into his eye, a curse of Binding on her lips. Ancient Forbidden One, First of Desire or not, she was not going to be toyed with.

“If you want a game, you cannot _cheat_ ,” she snapped.

Imshael chuckled, finding no small amount of amusement from her rejection of the norms of the game. He wiped her bloodied spit out of his eyes, and shook it off his hand.

“A choice then. Your head or _his_.”

Rage bubbled in her chest, and Imshael laughed.

“You'd sacrifice him, then, how in-”

“Lay any of your power on the Commander Cullen, Imshael, and I will show you the extent of my fury,” Aurum said viciously, still trying to pull her head away from Imshael's touch.

“You believe you could stop me?”

“I am willing to die to find out. Are you?”

Imshael laughed and stepped away from Aurum. She did not relax. This was still a game, and any manner of weakness would only result in pain or possession. She was steel inside, bendable, but not liable to shatter.

For long moments, the demon circled her, his gaze flicking between Cullen, who stood at the edge of the barrier, sword drawn but unable to rush in, fear and rage leaking from him in near-palpable waves., and Aurum, who stood stone still, jaw set, and face still.

“I do wish to play a game, elfling.”

“I agree to no game in which I have no say in the rules.”

“Fair play, then. I want the barrier between us and the Commander down. It does nothing, anyway. I can still feed off his fear and fury. It only keeps him from being able to assist you.”

“Why should I do something so monumentally stupid as let you near another potential victim?”

“The barrier isn't working. I can go through it at any time.”

Aurum's steely countenance faltered at that. Her barriers had never been susceptible to such things before. She had held strong against plenty of demons, even Nightmare in the Fade itself. But this was Imshael, and he was older than many things.

“-ying!”

She shook her head. That sounded like Cullen, but the barrier shouldn't be so permeable to allow him to speak through it. Had Imshael already penetrated it? Had she already failed to protect Cullen?

“ -'s lying!”

Aurum blinked, and turned, slowly to look back to Cullen. All at once, Imshael was in her space once again, grabbing her by the chin, jerking her head away and holding her flush to his body. Heat flooded her veins, the false need of a Desire not her own. His was the touch of the most decadent of lovers, and it was coupled with a burst of pleasure so acute that her knees went weak in a way she could not ever remember them going before.

“Don't pay attention to that, now. You need to take the barrier down. It's useless.”

“ _He is lying, Aurum!_ ”

Out of her periphery, she saw Cullen beating frantically on a still very-solid barrier. Her eyes felt so heavy, but she forced herself to look closer, harder.

“He is **_lying_**!” Cullen shouted for the fiftieth time. He could hear Imshael, and the hidden laughter in the demon's voice for the trick he was pulling on the mage.

Pain was too distant for her to feel, too far removed from the pleasure Imshael pushed against her body. But rage was still easy enough. He fed that too – the hallmark of a truly powerful demon – but Imshael had not had to deal with one such as her in many years, and when fury faded to determination, it was him who staggered.

The barrier snapped closed around them, a perfect circle, trapping them in together, keeping Cullen safely out.

“ ** _NO!!_** ” he screamed, rushing to the new barrier, beating on it with the pommelstone of his sword. “ _No_! Let me in! Fuck, Aurum, let me _in!_ ”

Panic made his heart hammer against his chest. He wanted to help, to cut that fucking demon into a thousand thousand tiny pieces for touching Aurum, but she was wrapped into the demon's arms, unmoving. She did not embrace Imshael, however. She just stared up at him, warring emotions at play within her chest.

“If I took you – and I have no reason to, dear Inquisitor – but if I took you, do you think he would cut you down?”

Cullen froze. Aurum sneered.

“He is a Templar. He'd do his damned job.”

“You think he'd just kill you?”

“If he has any respect for the mages he's killed before he met me, he'd better.”

“ _Then why are you still alive_.”

Aurum's rage manifested as a firestorm fierce enough to make the barrier beneath Cullen's hand warm. The accusation cut her to the quick, even in passing implication.

“I. Am **. Myself**.”

The words shook the stones, snow falling from broken walls and ruined buttresses. Her anger came up in her chest again, dark and desirous, and even if she knew it was the demon, even if she could see Imshael grinning at her, drawing closer to Aurum.

“Of course you are. Of course. Your eyes tell me everything I need to know. Quite like your mothers, quite like that. But I suppose we should get to the game, my dear.”

Aurum’s sneer did not fade.

“I can give you whatever you want, Inquisitor. Anything you choose, I can give you. I will give it to you, freely. And then, dear one, I will leave.”

Aurum blinked, Cullen howled, and Imshael grinned knowingly.

“What…do you offer, demon?” she said slowly, watching Imshael closely as the demon began to circle her.

“Money. Sex. Power. What do you want?”

“You know what I want. And what I can’t have. Tell me what I want. If you’re right, I’ll take it.”

Cullen couldn’t breathe. Aurum was trading words with the demon, and he was powerless outside the circle she had erected. She couldn’t hear him, she wasn’t looking at him, and the demon was circling again. He could feel the power of the demon worming through the air, settling on his skin, digging into his flesh. Panic was no longer an apt descriptor for what he felt. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think, and he had no way to get away. The demon was in his head, he could feel the pressure against his skull as the _thing_ clawed its way deeper into him.

“Aurum, Aurum _please_ ,” he moaned, pressing himself against her barrier, praying for it to give way so he could run in.

“You want…” Imshael started.

The crawling on his skin grew in intensity, and Aurum shivered in time with him. Cullen felt the claws of the demon settle into his mind, and he howled, clutching at his head. Aurum gasped and looked to him. Her heart was pierced by talons and she bled emotions that felt like acid in her chest, and she collapsed, pressing her palm against her sternum, trying to breathe through it.

“You want so many things, Inquisitor.”

“ _Yes_.”

“You want him?”

“ _Yes_. Gods.”

“Shall I give him to you? Make him yours? Only yours, forever yours? I can do that. I can give you everything you ever wanted from him. I can make him yours and yours alone. Is that what you want, Aurum?”

Cullen felt the pressure in his head again, branding a name into his skin. Howling did not seem enough to get it to stop, but Maker, he tried. She was a crumpled ball inside the barrier, clutching at her arms, panting, trying to find her words as Imshael circled ever closer. He wanted to protect her, he wanted to save her, but she had shut him out and he couldn’t do anything. Cullen screamed anew, trying to get words out around the pain and desire that were burning him.

“I want…” she started, the words sticking in her throat.

Imshael laughed and cupped her chin in his hands, pulling her in close to him. From her knees, Aurum could only be pulled flush to his knees and thighs, her face dangerously close to his crotch. As much as he may style himself a Spirit of Choice, he was a Desire demon, and it was an act of temptation. Succumb and take what you want.

Succumb and take what you need.

Succumb and take what was denied to you.

Kneel and succumb.

“I want you to get _out_ of his _head!_ ” she snarled, finding her voice and power.

Her left arm, still weak from the wound, could still swing a sword, and her knight enchanter’s blade sang out. Imshael dissolved into the Fade, a shocked gasp still on his lips as the Void reached for him again. The barrier holding Cullen back shattered and with a startled shout, he fell forward.

The demon was gone and the screaming in his head had stopped, but he was still slow to get to his feet. But by the time he had found his footing, Aurum hadn’t gotten to her feet. Shaking his head, Cullen approached her slowly, trying to catch his breath. She was shaking, curled in on herself, soft shuddering sobs coming from her mouth.

“Aurum?”

“Just…a moment, Cullen. Please. Give me a moment,” she grit out, rocking back and forth.

“What’s…wrong?” he asked hesitantly, kneeling down next to her.

To his shock, she curled into his side, pressing her forehead to his neck. He looked down and saw her right hand curled around her left wrist. Her left palm was wreathed in green flames and he could see the Anchor in her hand gaping wide, splitting her skin open. Cullen could not help but stare. Splintering veins led away from the anchor, blackening skin as it went. He could see blood sliding down her arm. She must have torn the tender skin around the new scar by swinging her sword so wildly at the demon.

Aurum panted unevenly, trying to breathe through the pain that wracked her. Her entire arm ached, but her hand burned like someone was holding a branding iron against her palm.

“Aurum _?!_ ” Cullen’s voice was touched with worry and panic. “Is this…Maker what can I do for you? Is it like this normally?”

“Only recently. More rifts I close, the less stable it gets. Then when I…when I go against a stronger demon…it hurts. Being near the Fade with it hurts bad,” she said between breathy pants. “My meditations help. I make its song closer to mine so it remembers me. Knows me. Hurts me less.”

Cullen’s stomach dropped.

“This isn’t a one time thing?”

“No. Creators, no.”

His own worry could be forgotten in that moment, the way his nausea made him feel like he was going to be violently ill could be forgotten, everything that he felt was wrong could be forgotten because he could see through Aurum’s hand, and see the Anchor spreading wider through her flesh, even as blood slowly dripped into the Anchor. This was the price of her power. He had had no idea.

Eventually, she found her footing, found her breath, and pulled away from Cullen.

“Thank you,” she said simply as she stood, shook her hand out, found her staff and lazurite sword hilt and turned towards the deeper part of the keep.

“We have to press forward. It will be night soon. My mages will need some help, or at the very least, some congratulations.”

He nodded, and followed behind her as she trudged onwards.

* * *

“Messere, Commander Cullen is here to speak with you.”

Aurum sighed, and put her mulled wine down on the side table. It was late in the night days after their defeat of Imshael. Setting camp had taken both of their attentions, as had defending it from the one attack by lingering red templars. She and Cullen had, as was apparently normal for whatever it was between them, been avoiding the other. This was not a conversation she necessarily wanted to have, but she was certain it was one that was needed. It was not too often a Templar saw a mage take out a demon on their own, especially not after such manner of temptation, and even after days of digestion, it was going to be an uncomfortable matter to discuss. She was certain that he would want to talk about something – anything relating to the fact that she had acted the way she had.

She was resigned to the argument that was coming.

“He may enter. Have Hashera cast a muffling ward around my tent. I do not want anyone hearing what will be happening, am I understood?”

“Yes, Inquisitor.”

“Thank you. The Commander may enter.”

The page bowed and held the tent flap open. As the Inquisitor, she had the nicest tent, but Aurum had done her best to make sure that ‘nicest’ was a matter of preference, not of definitive description. Her tent had a larger cot, and some finer furs, but it was not anything overtly luxurious. Something easy to carry around while they were out fighting and setting up camps out in the great wide somewhere. Suledin Keep was theirs now.

Cullen ducked into her tent, the flap closed, and again, they stood regarding each other. Aurum rose to greet him. She was wearing simple, loose-fitting clothes in preparation for bed. A brazier in the corner kept her tent warm in a mundane way. Her left arm was bandaged again, holding it stable against her chest, trying to soothe muscle aches with pressure and stability. He stared for a moment, taking nearly a moment to decide what needed to be done before doing it.

Carefully, demonstrating his intent not to harm her, he drew his sword and knelt at her feet. Smoothly, he presented his sword to her, the flat resting on his palms. Aurum blinked. He had never…actually sworn fealty to her before. Not like this at least. Both knees on the ground, head bowed.

“Inquisitor, I am sorry. I have offended you and not acted appropriately. Please, accept my blade as a sign of my dedication to you, and the cause for which we both fight.”

For a long while, she just stared at him down by her feet, trying to find her words. Because there were words she wanted to say, and words that were expected but which of them would accurately portray what she wanted to say just wasn’t clear. Cullen did not move or look up to her, waiting for her reaction and judgment of his actions.

“Cullen. I don’t want your bladed dedication,” Aurum settled on after a tense minute.

Startled, Cullen looked up sharply.

“If this is because Rylen-”

“This has nothing to do with Serah Rylen, Cullen,” Aurum said softly, gently brushing the sword out of Cullen’s hands. It clattered to the floor, but before Cullen could flinch away, she had cupped her hand along his jaw. “I don’t want your sword. I want you. However it is you find best to have me, I want you. Leader, bother, lover, fond memory, I would take any of it.”

He gaped at her.

“What-?”

“Imshael was right, Cullen. I want you. More than anything else. I shouldn’t want, and I can’t have you, regardless. Not the way I want. Not without changing some fundamental part of you, not without a demon's interference. I won’t do that. I just…want. You. I don’t need you to swear yourself to me, I don’t need you to do anything other than know that, and to trust me when I make decisions. I did what I did today to keep you safe.”

Cullen blinked.

“You think you can’t have me?” he asked softly.

“Of course I can’t. You made that clear. What I want and what you want are two different things. That’s fine. I don’t…want to make you do something you don’t want to do, and I won’t force you to have me in a way you don’t want. But I refuse to be a night-time’s secret. I want to be yours and yours alone and everything that entails.”

He stared at her, and she down at him. His mouth was hanging slack. His heart was still in his chest, and he couldn’t…couldn’t think of anything other than this.

Cullen had thought it had hurt when she had broken things off between them that day in the hidden librarian’s nook. He thought he had been hurt by the seemingly sudden abandonment of himself and their relationship. Thought it had hurt to think that she had wanted nothing to do with him for no better reason than…him being scared of her for a moment.

But this.

This hurt more.

“You…Aurum, _no_ ,” he said softly, reaching out to grab her by the back of her thighs, not wanting her to move away from him. “No, it wasn’t like that. I don’t want that. I want you, I…care for you. Deeply.”

She let him hold her legs, not wanting to offbalance herself by moving away.

“Cullen, please. If you can’t want me wholly and completely, then I can’t-”

“I want you more than I’ve wanted anything, or anyone else.”

Aurum sighed, and moved to push his hands away. Stubbornly, Cullen held her tighter, pulling her closer to him, not wanting her to get away. Not just yet.

“It is one thing to say it, another to prove it Cullen. I don’t mind if you don’t want me like that. It’s fine. I just couldn’t…keep doing that. That’s all. I still care about you. I just don’t want to deal with that.”

Cullen growled, pulling her back closer to him, pressing his forehead into her hip.

“ _No_. It wasn’t _like that_ , Aurum.”

She sighed, and pushed ineffectively on his shoulder.

“Cullen, I’m not offended. I’m too tired to be offended. It is okay. We come from two different places in life. You saw so much of what mages can do wrong, I don’t blame you, entirely, for what happened, or where our paths lead. Life is like that. I am happy for the time we had, if nothing more.”

He cursed against her hip, looking up to her. His nose got caught on her tunic and pushed it up with the movement, and without thinking, he rasped his teeth over the enchanting curl of her hipbone. Aurum gasped, pushing on the back of his head in shock.

Cullen moved with the push, dragging his lips across the expanse of her lower abdomen, his tongue darting out to taste her. She was wrong. She was so wrong about everything and he wanted to show her how wrong she was. He wanted her more than he wanted to breathe. Despite how deeply Kinloch hold had scarred him, the advice Dorian had given Aurum had once been given to him, and he had developed quite the reputation amongst the women of the brothels the Templars often visited on the nights the nightmares kept him awake too long.

Her stomach jumped in shock and her surprised hiss wasn’t enough for him to want to pull away.

“Cullen?” she questioned softly. “What’re you doing?”

He tugged on the laces of her trousers, looking up to her.

“Demonstrating, yes?”

Her eyes fixated on his scar and all the air in her lungs left in a rush. He smirked at her, her knees went nearly weak.

“Ah, Cullen, it’s not necessary?” Aurum said weakly, blinking as she felt his hands knead at her thighs.

“I want you to know how much I want you Aurum. Nothing has changed. I want you, and no other.”

He gently tugged her trousers down, watching her intently all the while. Her hand hadn’t left the back of his head, and took that as tacit approval of what he was doing. Slowly, her fingers curled into his hair, and as he brought his hands up to hook his thumbs under her smalls she trembled.

“It’s…a kindness, Cullen, but please. You don’t need to do this. I don’t…want to be this secret for you. I can’t be a secret.”

She tried so hard to keep her voice even, tried to keep desire out of it, tried to rein everything inside of her tight, but Cullen was smirking up at her and pulling her smalls down with her trousers, and everything was all tangled up with emotions in her chest.

“Then scream my name, Aurum. Scream it to the sky, to your gods, for everyone to hear.”

His voice was dark and growly, and she gasped as he puffed air against her slit. Whimpering, she pulled on his curls, rocking her hips against his face for a brief moment. Cullen wrapped his hands back around her thighs, pulling her legs ever so slightly apart, letting her rest her knees against his chest to brace herself. She shook, and he cradled her as gently as he could as he began demonstrating his skills.

In the long years since Kinloch, he had cultivated a skill for pleasuring women with his mouth. It had brought him meditative joy in that time when he was still haunted and plagued by what had happened in the tower to put his face between woman’s thighs and spend hours there, until she was exhausted and he was thoroughly satiated. It had dampened the memories and the pain, and as much as it was sin, and unholy in the eyes of the Maker (or so the Chantry sisters had said, on the few occasions he had been caught), he had sought it greedily in those years.

But with Aurum, it was different.

He was not searching for his own pleasure and peace of mind, but hers. Yes, he was at peace like this, yes, it made the panic and fear in his chest subside because it divorced the thoughts of what had happened to _him_ at the hands of desire demons from what had happened _now_. It made him feel much more at peace than any prayer or holy thing. Profane acts to soothe profane memories, but despite all of this, he was still doing this for Aurum, and Aurum alone. Cullen wanted her to understand him, and he thought this was the best way to impress upon her how much she meant to him. Let the entire world hear her scream his name to the heavens. He wanted her. He wanted her and he did not care if every last person in the camp heard her –

“Ah! _Cullen!!_ ” she howled as his tongue ventured inside of her.

His fingers dexterously slid inside as well, stroking her inner folds, and he went to the most pleasurable work he knew of. It didn't matter to him that she had not had time to bathe, it did not matter to him because it was _Aurum_. She rocked mindlessly in time with his slow, torturously teasing tongue, gasping softly.

She could either cover her mouth or balance herself with a hand on the back of Cullen's head. Aurum couldn't decide which was the best, which option she should take. She wanted him, and that was about as far as she could think.

“Never stop, don't _stop_ , Cullen! Please don't stop!” she cried out, pulling his hair hard as she felt her orgasm building in her gut.

But he _did_ , pulling away from her to smile broadly up at her.

“Did you want more, Aurum? Did you want me to continue?”

With a keening wail, Aurum canted her hips towards his mouth, trying to urge him back to his previous task.

“ _Sathan_ , Cullen, please!”

“You beg so nicely, Aurum. Don't stop.”

He didn’t have to ask twice. As soon as she felt his mouth back between her legs, her body seized and she threw her head back. Her voice ululated in an unending wail of “Don’t stop, don’t stop!”

Cullen preened beneath her panted praises, smirking to herself as she writhed in time with his ministrations. Every time he pulled away or paused, she would whine, buck, pull on his hair, try and get him to carry on, breathless with her desires. He nipped at her thighs delighting in seeing small reddened marks blossom from his worship of her body. He rasped his nearly-beard scruff against her skin, and she clenched her thighs tight around his head with a shouted curse. It, as it had done in the years since Kinloch, soothed the memories of what had happened in that bedamned tower to have a woman so desperate for him. It was different with Aurum, though. Because it was Aurum.

Aurum sought pressure and friction from his mouth with breathless, desperate need. So when he pulled away again, leaving her teetering on the precipice of satisfaction, her good-natured growl of frustration elicited a chuckle from Cullen.

“More?”

“So help me, Cullen. Finish what you’ve started or I will have you – I don’t know. Fucking court martialed. Just. Don’t. _Stop!_ ”

“Is that an order, Inquisitor?” he purred, breathing heavily on her dripping slit.

Aurum shivered.

“Did I stutter when I said i-i _ht_?” she hissed as he licked her clit.

“No, you didn’t.”

Obligingly, Cullen had kept his mouth on her, so his voice was muffled. His fingers slowly pumped in and out of her and his tongue circled her clit lazily.

Again, he edged her towards the blissful point of release, but backed away just as she was about to fall. Aurum sobbed his name, incapable of words or movement, so deep the shock of not being allowed her pleasure had cut her. Her body was wracked by spasms as her entire being sought the pleasure Cullen was so easily denying her. Patiently, he waited, kneeling beneath her, smiling beguilingly, licking his lips to taste her sweet juices. He wanted her to lavish him with praise and hear her shout his name to the skies.

“You are a fucking _tease_ , Cullen,” Aurum hissed when she caught her breath.

His response was to nuzzle at her slit with his nose, putting just barely enough pressure there to make her squirm. Lazily, he traced the outline of her pearl with his tongue, delighting in how her body reacted to his every movement. He had missed her dearly, and he wanted her to realize just how much he had wanted her.

“You're pretty infuriating yourself, you know, Aurum,” he said congenially, turning his head so he could kiss her thigh.

She grabbed the back of his head and pulled him back to his task, growling at being denied for so long. Cullen laughed, but obliged her willingly, wrapping his hands around the backs of her thighs, dragging his tongue across the entire length of her slit. He didn't need the use of his fingers to make her scream, and he set to that task eagerly. This time, there was not to be any reprieve for Aurum. He was going to make her scream his name as she came, and he wanted everyone in the camp to hear it.

“Ah – _ah!_ Cullen!”

Not nearly enough just to hear that, he decided. He wanted more out of her. The demon had used him to torment her, and she had been utterly willing to offer herself to its torture to keep him safe. It had been the demon's miscalculation, the demon's overreach for him that had given Aurum strength enough in her badly injured arm to swing and kill.

Cullen couldn't let that go without notice.

Couldn't let Aurum go without letting her feel what burned in the back of his throat. He may not be able to say the words that tumbled in the background and foreground of his mind, but he could show them. He'd always been very good at demonstrating his points once words failed him.

He wasted no time bringing Aurum to that glorious precipice, suckling and licking and mouthing in equal parts as she urged him on with heavily accented moans of pleasure. This time, she was careful to keep her hand on the back of his head, keeping him from pulling away as she bucked her hips against his face, chasing pressure and friction that he was only too happy to give to her.

“Cullen, sathan, ma'vheraan, _sathan_ , sathan, sathan, sathan!” she cried, uncaring of her volume, or the way she felt her magic blooming in her chest.

Aurum had never been particularly enamored with previous lovers who insisted upon using their mouths on her, never had found pleasure in the act, but that was before Cullen, before this moment, before she felt half-restrained by bandages and cloth, before she had been so very caught up with the words of a demon and all her desires lain bare once again.

This was...sublime.

Cullen supported her, holding her legs steady against his chest and shoulders, locking his arms around her, keeping her from going anywhere. He was unrelenting this time, seeking that blissful edge he had been denying her for what felt like hours at this point. She felt his hips move in time with hers, echoing every little jerk she made with one of his own and-

“Using me – _ah!_ \- for your own pleasurable devices, ser-r _uh_ -ah?” she mumbled.

Cullen merely growled against her flesh, pulling her tighter to him, nipping delicately at her plumpened and ripe pussy, letting his tongue slide into her folds to taste her. Intentionally, he rocked his hips against her leg, letting her feel the hard press of his cock against her, letting her comprehend how this act affected him as much as it affected her. Aurum's breath left her in a rush, and she could do nothing to help the way her thighs tightened around Cullen's head.

He could hear nothing but the rush of her blood beneath her skin. What little lyrium was still in his blood sang glorious hymns as it felt the pull of magic all around him. His world was muffled down to the singularly most pleasing thing – Aurum. Thighs clamped tight over his ears, hands full of her muscled flesh, drinking the floodwaters of her desire down into himself...it was the peace he had sought in the years after Kinloch, only it took until now for it truly to settle over him.

Aurum's entire body snapped like Sera's bowstring when he moved his mouth back over her engorged pearl, and even with her thighs tight over his ears, he heard her scream his name.

Where once she had begged him to let her cum, he was now intent upon hearing her tell him to stop. He did not care to have her forget this moment easily. He was going to burn himself into her memory, even if it meant putting himself at the mercy of an overwhelmed mage. She was howling his name now, grinding her hips against his ever-inquisitive mouth, pushing his head further against her, chasing a high unlike anything she had ever felt. There was nothing but pleasure to her knowledge in that moment. No war, no Anchor, no demons, no nothing except for Cullen's mouth sealed tight against her clitoris, and his tongue flicking at odd intervals to keep her body singing his praises.

He didn't want to stop.

He never wanted to stop.

If the world dropped away, if there was never anything other than the two of them ever again, if this was the last moment, if they could stay like this forever, Cullen could be at peace with that.

This was all he had ever wanted, and more than he could have ever hoped for.

It was only when he felt the strength in her legs leave her, only when she nearly collapsed down onto him entirely, that Cullen saw fit to cease his torture.

He pulled away from her, neck and shoulders aching, knees sore and cock so hard he felt fit to burst right then and there, but the wide-eyed, open-mouthed look of adoration on Aurum's face was more than worth all the small aches and pains. She trembled when he stood to gather her back into his arms, but when he tried to move her towards her bed, so she could sleep and he could find respite for his own pleasures, she took a step away from him, kicking her trousers off as she did so.

“Take them off,” she said plainly, her voice still reedy.

He looked to what had drawn her gaze, only to find the flaming sword of the Templars etched into his bracers.

The brands of a life he no longer lived.

Cullen looked back to Aurum, her eyes hooded, her body relaxed, and her thighs slick and reddened from his own ministrations. She was what he wanted.

The clarity in that moment made so much more come into focus. He did want her. Now, later, and until his dying day. He wanted Aurum. He wanted the Inquisitor, the Dalish apostate, the woman who had carved her name into his heart with that very first kiss they had shared. There could be none other than her.

He threw the bracers away from him as quickly as he could get them off. They hit the side of her tent with a thud, and fell somewhere near her braizer.

Aurum's gaze did not falter, and this time, she knelt, taking his hands in hers and kissing every one of his fingers in turn. His shocked sound quickly turned into a bitten back moan as her betimes too-sharp teeth found the delicate skin on the inside of his wrist. She sucked over his pulsepoint there, leaving a blooming hickey in her wake as she turned quickly to his other wrist, lest Cullen think to move his hand elsewhere while hers began to roam.

He bit back a curse ineffectively as her free hand cupped his cock, stroking in time with the nips and sucking of her mouth on his wrist. Aurum smiled against his skin, not looking up to him while she worked her dastardly deeds on his body. Cullen rolled his hips against the minimal pressure her hand afforded him, chasing pleasure and friction.

She did not draw away until there was a matching mark on his other wrist and he was trembling with want unfulfilled. When she looked up at him, eyes glittering with magic and might and promise, Cullen sighed. Slowly, Aurum stood, trailing her hand down his arms, across his chest, and then down, until her fingers had found his belt. He felt magic whisper around him, and to his shock and awe, then felt his armor sag, laces and straps loosened.

“Stay.”

Her voice was small. Too full of hope, of wants and desires, to sound like anything other than a woman who wanted nothing more than her lover to be with her through the night. Cullen blinked slowly, trying to process everything. He took too long, and Aurum turned away from him, her ears sagging.

He felt a sharp pang in his chest, and reached out to her, wrapping her back in his arms, reaching up to brush the back of his hand across her cheek, and ear. Aurum whimpered, leaning into his touch, her eyes closed and brows furrowed.

“Aurum…”

“Cullen. Please.”

“I don’t ever want to leave you, but your mages, the men, they will talk if I stay.”

“As much as if their Commander walks out of here with a sword pressing against the front of his trousers?” she asked, fingers skimming his belt again.

Cullen hissed, tensing as he tried to fight against the resurgence of need in his chest.

“They’ve already started talking about what has happened in here, I’m sure.”

“Hashera cast muffle on the tent. No one has heard anything. Your secret is safe still,” Aurum said with a sigh, tugging at the beltloops of his outfit. “No one knows. If anything, they think you’ve just been getting chewed out for however long we’ve been in here.”

“Aurum,” Cullen said softly, following her movements as she backed towards her cot, leaning in to try and kiss her.

“I don’t want you to stay unless you truly want to, Cullen. If you have any doubt…it would be better if you just went.”

The back of her legs hit the cot, and Cullen did not pull away. Aurum just averted her gaze from him, shifting her injured arm further away from him. She didn’t want a fight. It was hard to want a fight when you weren’t wearing any smalls or trousers.

“Our business is our business, Aurum. I don’t…I don’t want them to look down on you, on _us_ because of our relationship. I don’t need them to know the sordid details of our personal lives.”

“Then why did you want me to scream your name just then? You didn’t know about the spell. You seemed perfectly content in passion to have the world know that my heart burns i-” Aurum caught herself at the barest last second, “-for you. But now, _now_ it is too much for someone to perhaps know the pleasure you find with me?”

Cullen blinked.

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“How did you mean, “I want to fuck you but I don’t want anyone to know we’re fucking”, then? Because it rather sounds less romantic and more shamed when you say it like that.”

“In the way that tells you that I respect your privacy and don’t need everyone talking about us. I don’t need or want anyone else but you. I’m not ashamed of that.”

He reached up to run a hand down her neck, his fingers shaking. Cullen could feel the magic beneath her skin, in one of those less-rare moments when he felt uncommonly attuned to Aurum and everything that made her, _her_.

“I’m not ashamed of you. Or what I want with you. I just don’t need all of Thedas trying to needle us for information.”

Aurum sighed, reaching up to cover Cullen’s hand with her own. His touch made her body sing, and she felt every last part of her soul ache for him.

“If you don’t want people to know about us, I would rather there not be an ‘us’ for them to know about.”

He kissed her, softly and sweetly, reaching to hold her close to him, and she surrendered to him. Kissing him was sweet pain, tainted with knowledge that there could be nothing more than this. Nothing more than embers under her skin, and a name in her heart that she could never erase, nothing more than breath in her lungs that tasted of the lips of the one she ached for, and whispered words that she bit back behind her teeth.

“I don’t want you to be a secret, Aurum. I don’t-”

“Inquisitor, it has been hours, and we wer-oh!”

Hashera had ducked into the tent, wanting to check on her Keeper and the Commander who was undoubtedly in need of relief if they were still arguing, and was very quickly backing out after seeing the two of them – Aurum wasn’t wearing any _trousers_ , and while her tunic was long enough to cover anything too scandalous…well, the Qunari had a very good sense of smell.

“Oh, oh goodness. Excuse me, Madame Inquisitor, Commander Rutherford. I’ll just be – I’ll just – oh goodness, I’m so sorry.”

The poor woman had gotten one of her horns tangled in the tent, and while she set about freeing herself, Aurum stood still, waiting for the Qunari to find the exit. After a few more moments of fumbling, Cullen sighed and stepped forward to help the thoroughly flustered woman with her horns. Mage or no, he knew that it was a hard thing to get out of. Hashera fussed, but then gave up, letting Cullen work the material free.

“My apologies, Commander, Inquisitor. I’ll just be…going now. Thank you. Sorry. Good night. Thank you – I mean. Sorry.”

Hashera bowed awkwardly, ducked beneath the tent flap again and then Cullen and Aurum were alone again.

“Well that will be all over camp soon. Sorry, Commander.”

Aurum could not keep the bitter tone out of her voice as she trudged over to her trousers. She needed to sleep, and she didn’t necessarily want to sleep half naked. If something happened in the night, she’d not want to end up fighting like that. It was less fun than it sounded. Cullen made a sound of distress under his breath and, moments later, there was the heavy sound of armor hitting the ground.

Startled, Aurum turned sharply, her ears flicking back against her head.

Cullen was stripping out of his armor, leaving it in a messy pile where he stood, not bothering to stack or fold anything. It was a trail of chaos he left as he stalked towards Aurum, his brows furrowed with some manner of concentration. Aurum looked up at him, not certain what to expect –

Until Cullen’s mouth collided with hers with enough force to send starbursts of pain across her lips. She gasped, but did not pull away. Again, Cullen pulled her flush to him, and without armor in the way, Aurum melted into him, reaching to hold him as tight as he held her with only one arm.

When he broke away, she panted out a quick, “The muffle ward is down, Cullen,” before his mouth was covering hers again, and he was slowly, turning, pulling her down into bed with him.

“I know. I _know_ , Aurum. I want you. Nothing’s changed. I still want you. That demon –Imshael – he wasn’t just right for you. I want you. I’ve never stopped wanting you.”

It took moments for her to get him out of the rest of his clothes, and much longer for Cullen to carefully remove her tunic without disturbing her bandaged and stilled arm. Aurum curled as best she could around him, wincing whenever he jostled her arm too harshly. He murmured apologies into her hair, soothing her hurt with a gentle, chaste kiss to her nose. His fingers skimmed the coin she still wore on a chain around her neck, and she felt him smile against her skin. She, in turn, found him still wearing the ring she had given him and carefully threaded the old relic onto her hand, with the chain he wore still looped through it. So bound together, with hands on the token they had given the other, the couple began to doze. 

Skin to skin, tangled together, warm and comfortable, they fell asleep. The aches of the day, the horror and fear that had wormed under their skin all faded with the steady heartbeat.

Late in the night, Aurum awoke and stared into the darkness of her tent. Cullen was still beside her, sleeping deeply, unworried by any fear or nightmare tonight. Aurum stared into the darkness as she had done in the nights since Imshael had tormented her and mulled over what the demon had said.

She had her mother’s eyes.

She had her _mothers’_ eyes

What did that mean.

What could it mean.

And why, why, why, **why** , did the demon see fit – had her father seen fit to mention that she had her dead mother’s eyes.

_Why._


	42. The Shovel

Cullen woke…late. He could hear the camp already moving about and knew, in the intrinsic way of one used to waking before the men he commanded, that he was late. But he was comfortable. Warm. Heavy furs pressed against his chest, smothering thoughts of rising. He could have a late day.

Or at the very least, let himself _think_ he could have a late day for just a little bit longer. Because he was so very comfortable in that moment that even the small lie to himself could be allowed. He wanted to be comfortable, feel warm and safe and protected for just a little longer before he went out to face the cold, dark world.

Awareness was very slow to return to him this particular morning, and it wasn’t until he tried to get up and heard a muffled groan from next to him.

“Stay,” Aurum mumbled sleepily, pulling him back down and curling tighter against his back.

“I…Aurum, we have to get up.”

His struggle against her was only perfunctory. Her naked body pressed against his was just irresistible, and they both knew it. He did not want to leave. He never _wanted_ to leave, but he had to. In order to lead, to Command, he had to get out their bed. Their charges – Rylen’s soldiers and her mage - certainly knew by now that he had spent his night with Aurum. Even if Hashera had said nothing of what she had seen, there was little doubt that could exist that he had spent the night in her tent.

Aurum nodded, but ran her fingers down the curve of his hip, sighing his name under her breath.

Her grip relaxed, giving him the space and looseness he would need to get up and move away. Aurum made no move to get up herself, however. She was content where she was, warm under the blankets and she didn’t need to move. If Cullen wanted to move, he could. But that was his choice. Not hers.

Cullen knew he should get up, and that he shouldn’t continue to lay next to Aurum as she traced circles on his hip and waist. He could feel the gooseflesh rising on his skin, a pleasant tingle following her fingers’ paths. Her breath tickled the back of his neck, and he could feel her lips just barely ghosting across his shoulder as she shifted.

He should get up.

Her palm cupped his hip, and she mumbled something quick and Dalish beneath her breath. She did not want him to go, but this was _his_ choice. His and his alone. And she was not trying to convince him one way or the other. She just wanted to touch him. He was stippled with scars, as any warrior would be at his age. Her thumb skipped over one particularly nasty one that must’ve been the result of a training accident. Jagged, but showing signs of age. An old wound. One that didn’t really mean much now, she was sure. But she had the time and luxury of touching it now, and it was in an unobtrusive enough place that she could touch it without the movement being interpreted as coercive.

Cullen was warm under her hand, and she delighted in that. She loved his heat, his fire, the way his body fit next to hers. He fit a hole in her heart that the rest of the world had carved out. Aurum just wished he could be more comfortable there. It didn’t matter much what he said about it, if his actions continued to war against the words.

She _wanted_.

Creators _save_ her she wanted this shemlen templar. Not any one else. Him. It was his heartbeat that her own echoed, and no one else’s. This was just another one of life’s great unfairnesses. She had given her heart to a shemlen. Not just a mundane shemlen, no. He had been a Templar once, and the bracers he wore were only just recently thrown to the corner of a room.

She pressed her forehead to his shoulder, trying to prepare herself for when Cullen would leave again. He would. He would, and she knew it because he was human and still did not understand.

Cullen sighed and, to Aurum’s surprise, turned in their cot, reaching out to wrap an arm around her waist. Before she could voice her surprise, Cullen swept down to press a kiss against her forehead, cheek, then her lips. Shocked for a moment, Aurum pulled back, trying to make certain that she understood his intention.

“Cullen?” she asked, her voice small and soft.

“There is…little harm in staying longer, I think.”

She blinked slowly, and gently reached up to brush her fingers down the side of his face. Cullen’s eyes fluttered closed and he leaned into her touch.

“You don’t have to, if you don’t want to, ma’vheraan.”

He kissed her nose, pulled her tighter to him. Aurum soaked his heat into her, because even beneath the furs, his heat made her entire body tingle. She kissed him again, sleepily content in that moment. She shouldn’t be so easily lulled, but she was.

“What does that mean, Aurum? Vheraan…ma’vheraan? You’ve said it before. Many times.”

“Oh. It is…a dalish endearment. My lion. A possessive. I don’t have to…say that if you don’t like it. I can stop.”

Again, she withdrew. It could be too much, to bear the affections of the Dalish, or even a Dalish mage. She did not want to smother him, but she had meant it for months.

Creators, the feeling was unusual. She wasn’t…used to this. The depth and breadth of emotion that bubbled in her chest whenever she thought about Cullen was still too much for her. She wanted nothing more than to curl around him. But it could be too much. It could be. It had been before.

“No, no. _Aurum_ , it is alright. I promise. I don’t mind it. I didn’t know what it meant. To you. To us.”

He didn’t know how to explain how the possessive on the old title made his heart swell in his chest, or how his breath caught at the memories of all the casual times she said it to him.

 _Ma’vheraan_ , she would say, and now he knew that she said it with possession and tenderness.

 _Ma’vheraan_.

He gathered her into his arms, pressing another kiss to her forehead, and when she tilted her face up, Cullen was quick to capture her lips with his. He wanted to kiss her, he wanted to assure her that he…wanted this. He wanted this. He wanted her. He would be her lion. Gladly. Her lion. Aurum’s lion.

The thought filled him with more pride than anything else he had felt before.

Cullen kissed her harder, reaching down to cup her hip, his fingers digging in to the flesh, pulling her hips to his, grinding himself against her, chasing friction and pleasure and Aurum responded with a soft moan, her hands moving to cover his. They were still covered by the furs and blankets, and as they started to move against each other, chasing pleasure and friction and a way to express the feelings in their chest without having to _say_ things.

She kissed him hard, reaching up to bury her hands in his hair, doing her best to muss his hair so she could feel the curls press against her palm. His tongue pressed against the seam of her lips, and with a muted cry, Aurum opened her mouth to him. Cullen’s moan was deep and throaty in response as she hiked her leg up over his hip. He rocked against her, delighting in the slide of his cock against her slit, the sensual pressure as Aurum started to roll her hips in time with his. His breath mingled with hers, and he trembled at the weight of emotion in his chest.

Carefully, and doing her best to not trap him if he wanted to get away, Aurum rolled Cullen onto his back. She grabbed the furs as they nearly slid off her shoulders and smiled down at him. It was that moment, with the Inquisitor in his lap, naked, his coin gleaming from in between her breasts, her eyes still half-blurry with sleep, but her lips twisted into a desirous grin, that Cullen recognized what the moment really meant to him. He was lucky. Beyond lucky. He was lucky and lucky and lucky again. It was Aurum. And she was with him.

And, ah, that was her _dripping_ for want of him, and slowly, slowly, he slid into her.

Her, the Inquisitor.

Her, the elvhen.

Her, the mage.

 _Her_.

 _“Aurum._ ”

Her head dropped back and she smiled. The movement pulled the bandages on her chest to the side and Cullen looked upon her wound with a fresh wave of guilt. Maker, if he had just been _better_ she would not be so mottled with scars. The puckered claw-wound from Adamant, the various small cuts and scrapes from battle, the silvered scars from what had happened at Haven, all of them could have been avoided, lessened or outright put to someone else's flesh if he had been better. Commanded better. Been less of the man he had been and more the man he was now, and would be in the future.

He could be better.

For her, he could be anything.

Aurum rose up on his cock, just ever so slightly, so she could sink back down again. Cullen groaned, perhaps overloud, because all at once, it seemed as if the sounds of the camp outside were muffled. But when he dared look up to Aurum, trepidation and concern (“ _she's just the commander's rabbit eared whore”_ ) dragging at his heart, he saw the Fade around her. It moved and twisted and a single spinning thread linked her to a much larger spell that hovered over their heads. For a breathless beat, he _saw_ her magic as only the oldest texts in the Templar order ever talked about. He saw it in the air around her, in her ever breath and exhalation. There was no beginning or end, there was only Aurum. Her magic _was_ her. She was magic.

He blinked, and it was all gone, wiped clean from his vision, leaving him staring up at Aurum. Nothing in how she looked in that moment spoke of any spell (a long-buried part of him whispered that he should be afraid he couldn't tell she was using her magic), but he had seen it, and instead of fear, he found nothing but awe blooming in his chest.

“A muffle spell?” he whispered, trying to keep quiet just in case that was not the spell she had cast.

Aurum started, her ears rising high for a moment. He had caught her off-guard with that. She had thought she had been being quiet with her magic, but apparently not.

“Yes. I figure if you're going to moan lasciviously, I should try and preserve _some_ of your dignity.”

The words came out as if she meant them as a jest, but the way her ears dropped for a moment, and the sudden darting of her eyes as she said them made Cullen think that she was, perhaps, hiding something in those words. Despite the distraction of her…writhing atop him, that tugged something in him. He reached up to her, brows furrowed.

“You think I lose dignity by being with you?”

Aurum’s lips twitched up into a snarl for the briefest moment. Her answer was a truthful “No.”

She did not explain further, however. Nor did stop her slow torture atop him. Her pace was leisurely, not at all muddled by the odd words Cullen was saying or the way he had managed to understand what spell she had chosen to cast. She missed him. Had missed him. Would more than likely continue to miss him after this interlude was completed and she was loath to be made to spend time talking about feelings when she could scratch her not quite proverbial itch for Cullen instead.

But Cullen was not so easily deterred.

“Aurum. You think _you_ lose dignity?”

“Creators, _no_ , Cullen. Stop this,” she growled, digging her fingers into his hips, trying to get him to shut up and enjoy fucking her.

His hands, large and shem- _human_ slid down her chest, his fingers tracing out the scars, both new and old, that decorated her skin. He still looked perturbed, however, and when she impatiently bucked her hips against his palms, he looked back up at her.

“You think I think that-”

“Messere Aurum, a raven from skyhold came from you. It bears Lady Leliana’s marks!”

The page was smart enough to not enter the tent, instead shouting their message at the ‘door’ as loud as possible. Aurum wilted, and despite the otherwise pleasurable activity they were engaged in, she knew she had to go. She had to. For them both.

“Ah, a moment, serah.”

She closed her eyes, trying to put her feelings back in order before she had to go be the Inquisitor and Cullen had to be the Commander. It took a great deal of strength to move to leave this bed, this moment – and it was, frankly, strength she did not have. Especially not when Cullen covered her hands with his, and looked up at her with adoration brimming in his eyes.

“Aurum…”

There was a question hiding poorly in his voice. Feelings and talking about them and having to explain them, none of that could truly happen when they still had to be the Inquisitor and the Commander.

 _Any excuse out of the mess I’m in_ , she thought bitterly as she leaned down to kiss Cullen’s forehead.

“We should get dressed, ma’vhenan.”

She saw the question, remembered her words, knew Cullen was smart enough to taste the smallest difference in the words she spoke. So she was quick to remove herself from his lap, from his warmth and seek out the accoutrements of the Inquisitor, to leave him in her bed, staring at her back with questions still dancing in his eyes. If she were stronger of will, of temperament, of faith, she could have turned to him and explained it all. Told him what she felt, what it meant when her heart beat in his chest, told him everything.

But that was more feeling.

And she couldn’t handle that right then. She couldn't.

There was a limit to her strength. A limit to how much she could bear on her heart before it became too much. That limit had come and gone some time the night prior, and now, all she really wanted to do was get her clothing on, and escape. The thin veneer of intimacy she had allowed herself in the night was not enough to stand up to the scrutiny of day.

Aurum dressed quickly, more used to dressing herself with an injured arm now, managing the knots and laces of her tevinter-styled garb with relative ease. Cullen rose behind her, the ring of her clan hanging from his neck.

Creators, he had no idea what it meant.

When she was dressed and prepared, and nearly about to leave, he caught her by her uninjured arm, and gently, so gently, pulled her back against him. He was so warm, and the Emprise was so _cold_ and when he kissed her, Creators when he _kissed her_ , she melted into him. It was harder than she would care to admit to pull away from him, but she had to. She _had_ to.

She wanted, and it was too much.

She wanted, and it was not at all enough.

* * *

Leliana had recalled both her and Cullen back to Skyhold. Something about having both of them in such a dangerous place or some other. The real reason did not matter. The Spymaster called, and they answered. Aurum led her mages, and Cullen followed behind with a contingent of exhausted soldiers. It came, then, as no surprise, when Aurum’s group made a quicker return than Cullen’s. Despite her people not being used to marching or being under the duress of battle, they were not stuck with regimented patrol patterns past other demanded trading of soldiers from one place to another. Aurum let her people move at their own pace, encouraging exploration and questions along the way. Circles had a bad habit of squashing any sort of outdoorsy explorations, and life as an apostate without the protection of a Clan was hard.

She was pleased to let them explore and run ahead and do everything they thought of without hesitation, because they were with other mages. There was very little for any of them to fear, and the more they got out and around, and felt the world around them, the more they would feel comfortable in their own skins.

She was their Keeper. This was her job.

Her joy.

They wandered into Skyhold in a mêlée of motion, talking quickly, animatedly over each other. There was some manner of debate going on, and Aurum was truly only half-listening to it. The rhythm of the conversation was vastly more important to her than what was actually being said. She wanted to hear their voices, their passions, their blossoming songs.

Ah, to hear their songs starting to take shape was something truly sublime. It was one thing to get Dorian, who had lived a life of relative freedom in regards to his magic finally start finding his footing on his own, and another entirely to get Orlesian and Fereldan Circle Mages to figure out who they could be outside the boundaries of the Circle that had caged them in.

There was no murmuring of suspicion or fear from elsewhere within Skyhold. Not from the amassed watchers, or anyone in the immediate area. That soothed Aurum. There would be no repeat of what had happened to her. Those that dissented had left in her absence, and she was more than fine with that outcome. Let those who did not think her mages were people find themselves far from her when she brought her mages home.

These were her people.

This was her clan.

She was indomitable.

This was her power, her might, her majesty and what it meant to be _her_. All else could fall away, everything that dragged at her heart, pulled her from being the Dalish Keeper towards being the Inquisitor, her feelings and emotions and any possible sort of blond-haired, golden-eyed distractions could be ignored because she had a duty that burned in her bloodline, a heritage that could never be forgotten or overlooked, a part of her very bones that could not be denied by anything, and as long as she cloaked herself in knowledge. She was a Keeper. The Keeper of this Clan, however odd and made-up it may be.

She was _Aurum_. Blood of Lavellan.

She dismounted her Hart, handing the reins off to Master Dennet with a small smile. It had been a good trip, and she was going to go see her First, wherever he was skulking, talk to her father and sisters, have some food, and then take a bath. It was going to be a very good evening.

* * *

It was not a good evening in the slightest.

Aurum had walked in on Dorian and Bull fucking not five hours earlier. In and of itself, that was not a bad thing. Bull and Dorian were adults doing adult things and peace be upon them. What unsettled her was the way in which they were going about it. She was no virginal creature, unaccustomed to the rigors of the world and all the different ways one could achieve pleasure, but…

There was a difference, and unsettling clench in her gut when she thought of a Qunari holding down a mage like Dorian.

Holding down Dorian, at all. Her first, her friend, put in a position like that.

She had tried to not think about it. They were consenting adults. Bull had abandoned the Qun.

Bull had _said_ he abandoned the Qun.

Bull had _said_ the people who attacked him were assassins sent by the Qun.

Bull’s name was _Hissrad_.

 **Liar**.

She shook her head for the umpteenth time, and pushed her paperwork away. Not even spending time with her sisters had settled her mind, and working on missives and notes and overviewing the movements of troops was far from anything that could calm her.

Tavern, then. Bull was more than likely still with Dorian, if his smug smirk at Aurum when she had jerked her head back upon seeing just what was going on was any indication. Dorian had flushed and tried to turn away, but Bull had just kept at it, clearly finding amusement in the whole mess.

She pinched the bridge of her nose and stood up quickly. She needed to be drunk to not think of this, and as long as she didn’t run into Bull, she would have enough time to get drunk, calm down, stumble back to her rooms as elegantly and gracefully as possible and in the morning, talk with Dorian over hangover-tea about what the _fuck_ was happening with him and Bull.

* * *

Bull and his Chargers were of course in the Tavern. She had sat down, gotten through the first mug and a half of her mead, and there they all were, en masse, sitting entirely too close to her table for her to ignore them properly. Krem, at the very least, seemed to understand she was not in a mood to talk, but Bull, glorious The Iron Bull was not picking up on that very important social cue, talking wildly and at length about how good he felt.

It took her no time or thought to correlate what he was saying to what he had been _doing_ mere hours before. He was not so crass as to say, directly, just what he was doing with whoever he was doing things with, but Aurum knew and he knew that Aurum knew and she was going to throttle him if he kept insisting upon saying things then looking over to where she was sitting with a grin on his face.

There was a joke in here somewhere, she knew.

Bull laughed and grinned and made raunchy jokes and Aurum’s grip grew progressively tighter on her mead and her nerves ever so quietly jangled against chains she did not think herself strong enough to hold onto anymore.

Dalish was the second to notice, undoubtedly because an _archer_ of her skill and markings and renown would be able to sense the rising tide born of fury and the need to protect in Aurum’s chest. Aurum’s own song was a cacophony of wailing strings and hissing winds and every time Bull sent a knowing glance over one of his stupidly large shoulders, the coil in her chest wound a little tighter and the song became a little louder.

Her patience was being tested, but moving from the table meant walking past Bull, or indicating that she was even capable of moving instead of sitting stoically and stewing over thoughts and feelings she daren’t let slip between her teeth. The thin veneer of professionalism was coming ever closer to cracking, so she slammed the last half of her mead and made to excuse herself. She’d grab a bottle and go drink elsewhere.

“Boss!”

Bull’s call could not be ignored without making too many things very obvious.

Aurum stopped dead, and turned to look at Bull. Dalish next to him flinched, jerking her head away, her ears dropping low and head tilting away. Aurum did her best not to stare down the other elvhen, acknowledging that the other had given over dominance of space to her. Bull was grinning, broadly, as if there was some great joke that she did not yet know the punchline to brewing in his head.

“Yes.”

“Oof, no reason for that, no reason for that!” Bull cried out, gesturing grandly. “It’s been a good day, hasn’t it?”

“No. Can’t say that it’s been anything like that. Do you have anything in particular to say, or is this self-congratulation going to continue now that you have a new audience member? Because I’m not beholden to stay like your Chargers are.”

Bull blinked quickly, recoiling only ever so slightly from her.

“You can’t be _that_ upset about what you saw, come on now.”

Her answering stare could have leveled mountains.

“Riiiiight, so you _are_ that upset. Wasn’t expecting that.”

“This isn’t quite a discussion for the open air, Hissrad.”

The title-name was a curse on her lips, a pointed barb intended to elicit a reaction. If he was going to push buttons, she was going to push back. Aurum severely doubted he had ever gone toe to toe with a fully realized Dalish mage. Many in the Qun thought they had. Few had ever had the acute displeasure of it.

None had ever faced Elarsulahaja.

None.

“I believe it is, Aurum.”

“For a secret-finder, you certainly are not skilled with secret-keeping.”

His eyes narrowed only the slightest bit. She did not react, despite the pull of pleasure for the reaction she got.

“If you have such a problem with me fucking-”

“My only problem exists within the bounds of your thick skull, Hissrad. Consider why a Dalish mage would find issue with one like _you_ being in bed with their First.”

That seemed to catch Bull off-guard. His ears flicked up for the barest moment, and Aurum did not consider it anything other than a carefully constructed ploy. All things in Bull’s repertoire were meant to elicit specific reactions. Even telling her that he was an agent of the Ben-Hassrath, all of it was a calculation. She had no reason to think anything else.

He was a friend, yes. But he was a friend who could be a threat to her Clan. And she couldn’t allow that, not without letting him know how deep the waters he was in were.

“Be more specific.”

“You play at games of domination on a mage and expect me to take it well. Tell me, when in the games do you rip out his tongue? When is his mouth stitched shut, when is he bound to one of your brothers as nothing more than a weapon? _Bas saarebas_ , Hissrad. The words of your own tongue. You think I do not hear those words ringing in my ears as I saw him with you?”

“I left the Qun.”

“Of course you did. You looked at me, and told me to make the decision. Your men or the Qun. Do not pretend as if this is a defense. If you hurt Dorian, if you go anywhere near the boundaries of game and pleasure with him, if he even shows the slightest hint in his song that you have brought anguish upon him, I will grind the bones of the Chargers into a paste, and it will be the last thing that passes your lips before your life passes from you. If you go back to the Qun and decide that he is a liability, a _dangerous thing_ , I will show you what **real** danger looks like.”

Bull blinked, and shifted. It was as close she was going to get to a reaction from him.

“I..see.”

“Is that all, then, The Iron Bull?”

“Yes, Boss.”

She nodded and turned sharply before leaving the tavern. She wasn’t thirsty anymore. She was angry and hungry and cranky. Aurum stormed back to her rooms, trying to let anger bleed from her. There was no point in that emotion. Not then. The Iron Bull was still a good friend, a good Companion. But her concern was Dorian. Regardless of all else, her concern was with what was best for her First.

* * *

“It’s none of your business what I do with Bull, Aurum!”

 _Creators save me I am too drunk for this_.

She had had a bottle of wine brought up to her room, drank the entirety of it, and then about thirty minutes into her very pleasant buzz, her best friend and First stormed into her room, demanding that she speak to him about what she had said to The Iron Bull. She entertained the shouting match for a good long while, letting Dorian vent.

“Absolutely none!!”

“I know, Dorian.”

That caught him off guard, and he stopped dead in his diatribe.

“I know it’s none of my business. But you’re my First. I need to make sure – I need him to _know_ that I would defend you. That I-”

“ _Aurum_ , it’s not the _same_.”

She shrugged.

“That’s probably true.”

“Then _why_?!”

“Because you’re family. And that’s what matters. You are family, and he will not hurt you. Not while I am alive.”

Dorian huffed, and reached an arm out to her. Aurum decided that he meant it as a placating enough gesture and rushed forward to hug him tightly. For a moment, he froze, clearly not expecting that, before relenting and embracing her as well.

They were family. That was true.

“You realize I have to give Cullen the shovel talk now too, right?” he said into her hair.

“I don’t know what gardening tools have to do with this, but alright.”

Dorian laughed, and Aurum just did not bother questioning him in that moment. Humans were odd, but this one was her brother, and another one was her lover. When he let her go, she called a page to go fetch further bottles of wine and the two of them caught up, carefully avoiding talking too much about their respective relationships. Certain feelings were too new for the both of them. And if one had to talk, so would the other. That could wait. For now.


	43. The Moment

Training in the mornings had taken on a ritualized aspect for Aurum and her mages. After she clambered out of her bed (and shoved Dorian out the other side, for good measure), Aurum got herself ready for the morning. She had to take it slow, she knew, but her mages did not. They would already be getting warmed up, Yalain or Hashera leading them through the first stretches of their morning routine. Her arm ached, and she winced as she shrugged into her clothes for the day.

She should really bring Hashera into Blood Lavellan. Yalain too, if she was interested. It would do better for her to have a Second and Third. It would create more safety for the Clan in case of disaster, and give more propagation to the lineage. If nothing else, it would secure Lavellan as immortal still.

Aurum only paused for a moment as she realized that she had just so casually thought of claiming a Qunari as part of her bloodline, but then with a grin, shook her head and looked to Dorian. Her First was a Tevinter Necromancer. An Altus. Once a slave-owner, now the best friend of an elvhen apostate and unlearning the toxic nature of his past, Dorian was fumbling to get dressed in some of the clothes he had loaned Aurum in the weeks before as she dressed herself. The last of the buckles and other assorted nonsense that was normal for Tevinter-styled garb was harder for her to get with just one fully dexterous hand, but she managed.

He gestured her over to him, and motioned impatiently for her to come over and sit in front of him so he could apply some kohl to her eyes. Aurum sighed and allowed the small amount of pampering but was very quick to move away when Dorian began reaching for the more advanced cosmetics.

“We’re going to practice, Dorian. No more!” she protested when he advanced on her with a brush laden with golden dust.

“I just – hold _still_ , dear – I want to try – Aurum, _behave_ for just a **moment** , would you?”

He grabbed her by the chin and held her still, despite her whined protestations. She hated wearing makeup to practice. Not that it ran or got in her eyes or anything, but it felt pretentious. Dalish rarely wore any sort of makeup, mostly because of their vallaslin, but secondly because of the lack of funds for such frivolities. Aurum had gotten used to some of the applications of makeup and why it could be necessary in certain circumstances, but _practice_ was not one of them.

It felt pretentious.

It felt _wrong_.

But Dorian persisted, and Aurum relented, with only the slightest amount of teeth-gnashing. Her friend dusted the inner corner of her eyes with the gold dust before sweeping it across her eyelids. Aurum growled under her breath as he held her face still to continue working on making her look even more radiant. She fussed as he continued, pursing her lips.

“Dorian, stop!” she cried when she finally had had enough. “Stop, please! I don’t need this, it’s unnecessary – we’re going to _practice_.”

“I know, dear, but you should absolutely look your best.”

She whined, fussing further until Dorian had no choice but to let her escape his grasp. Aurum stole a glance at herself in the mirror and sighed.

“Why on earth, Dorian? It looks nice and you know that, shut up,” she said, cutting off his self-congratulatory comment. “But I’m going to guide practice and I am going to sweat most of this off.”

“No, you aren’t.”

She blinked, looked up and tried to figure out what Dorian meant. She was not certain if she understood him correctly, because she was pretty certain that makeup could be sweated off. But Dorian smiled broadly and beguilingly before gesturing for her to come with him. Aurum shook her head and shooed him away. He laughed, and gently placed a hand on the small of her back as he guided her through Skyhold. Aurum allowed the movement with a soft protestation that Dorian laughed off.

It was not so egregiously early in the morning that there was no one else around, and Aurum made casual conversation as Dorian stood by her side. He was gracious enough to rescue her breakfast from Sarah, smiling at his little sibling while still managing to steal one of the candied fruits for himself. Aurum rolled her eyes at him and still took the bowl of her oatmeal and jerkily began to eat. Her left arm was still stiff, so she held the bowl in her left hand and slowly, carefully, ate. Dorian helpfully answered questions on her behalf when some Orlesian sycophants begged for her attention.

Aurum nodded along as Dorian spoke, tacitly giving her agreement to what was being said.

The longer it took them to get outside, the more irritated Aurum grew. She tried to urge Dorian along, because they were getting to be later and later to the practice, but Dorian seemed content to give any one person who asked for attention his whole undivided attention for as long as they needed it. Aurum finished her breakfast and passed it off to the servant who appeared at their elbow.

“Dorian, this is quite enough. Thank you, serah, I will have Josephine contact you for more information regarding the hooligans that have absconded with your brooch.”

The words were empty in her mouth, but she said them anyway because it was what the people would expect in these Games. Dorian chucked under his breath but allowed her to lead him away from the ever-growing contingent of hangers-ons and hopefuls.

“What is this about, Dorian?” Aurum hissed as Dorian found something very interesting in the wall of murals that he wanted to ask the mason’s guild representative about.

Her friend just smiled broadly over his shoulder and went back to his pleasant conversation. Aurum could feel the crowd that she had only just recently dismissed from her orbit starting to come back to encircle her. She could not force Dorian to leave without being rude, and he knew it. So she stood, fuming, next to him, waiting for her friend to finish his inane conversation.

She was missing practice, she was letting her mages down and as much as it was her way of training them, the morning routine was also for her. It was her moment of clarity, and goodness knew after her blow up at Bull the night before that she needed that clarity and she was more than just starting to get frustrated. She _wanted_ to be done with this, because _this_ was her day to day anyway, and she did not need to spend even more time dealing with these manners of things instead of doing what she _wanted_ to do.

But she was the Inquisitor, after all, and she couldn’t stamp her foot and make unreasonable demands to leave without coming across as even more unmanageable than she usually was.

So Aurum sat and stewed, waiting for Dorian to be done as the time dragged onwards. Damn Tevinter was outrageously good at talking someone in circles for hours at a time, and was intent upon proving his skills, apparently, asking after the meaning of all the different pieces of ancient art that Aurum had been dragging home on their long adventures. The mason was more than happy to talk at incredible length at the meaning behind all of the individual tool marks that could be seen on the latest completed piece and while yes, it was very interesting, it was not nearly as interesting as being with the rest of her mages and actually leading them as she was meant to be doing!

Dorian eventually disengaged with the mason and waved Aurum to follow behind him. It took a lot out of her to not rush him away, but if he stopped one more time, they were going to miss practice entirely and she was not going to accept that.

So of course Varric appeared out of the woodwork when they were mere feet from the door that opened into the greater courtyards of Skyhold. Aurum bit her cheek near hard enough to taste blood, and the pain was the only thing that kept her from screaming as Varric and Dorian both dove into a very complicated conversation about Swords and Shields, which was the book that Cassandra loved to pieces and Dorian loved as well and she couldn’t understand why the shems would waste paper _writing_ erotica instead of just going out and _fucking_ like normal people would.

Fantasies, she could understand.

Writing them down? For others to see? No, she couldn’t understand that in the slightest. It made no sense, and she did not fault Cassandra for her love of the turgid schmaltz that Varric wrote under some small amount of protest. But she did not understand why the shems loved this sort of thing.

She was polite enough to not say as much when Varric asked after her opinions on what he should write, and instead deflected to something else to say. Honestly, she wasn’t even paying attention to what she was saying –

“I don’t really relate to any story with two humans fucking, Varric. Even in the most dramatic of circumstances, I can’t really relate, now can I?”

Varric nodded along sagely, and Dorian, beside her, was grinning entirely too much like a cat that just managed to pin a sparrow beneath its paw. The conversation carried on in much the same vein, with Aurum trying to disengage from it so she could get to the training field that she so desperately wanted to be in.

“What’s wrong with my writing? You are pretty much the same size as a human.”

“Ears, Varric. Very important, those. Changes the whole dynamic if there aren’t any _ears_ involved,” she grumbled with an irritated flick of her own ears.

More nodding, and a wider grin from Dorian as Aurum fought to find the words that would best let her leave without giving the appearance of being rude to Varric. He was a good friend, but right in that moment, she really would prefer to be somewhere else, and it was hard to figure out how to phrase those words.

Especially because every time she looked for a chance to say something, he would apparently anticipate it and ask something else, leaving her with words on the tip of her tongue with nowhere else to go.

“What is so important about the ears?”

“We’re elves. It’s kind of our _thing_. We have long, delightful ears, and they’re not just for practical uses. They have social and intimate cues and uses and they’re an integral part of how we communicate with our partners.”

Aurum brushed the comment off, trying to disengage from the conversation so she could go tend to her mages. She was near certain that they were waiting for her and she was anxious to get to them. The whole morning was slipping away from her and she was not happy with it in the slightest. The grumpiness that dogged her also left her open to needling from Varric and Dorian both, and they took full advantage. Varric, for his next book “not _really_ about” Hawke and Fenris…or maybe even a story about the Warden-Commander and her lover Zevran, wanted to know all the little details. Dorian, to better understand the culture of his adopted Clan and family. Aurum grumbled through it all, answering as best she could while being as short as possible.

“Yes, just like that, Dorian. Friends or close companions, like that. Lovers would touch higher up and it’s very intimate and not something you would do in public - can we be _done_? I would like to go practice now,” she griped, waving her hands angrily, trying to get this all done with so she could _get outside_.

Dorian laughed, Varric joined in, and Aurum flipped both of them off.

She refused to think about how their laughter faded and their eyes got sad when they saw that her left hand had a harder time with the gesture, and her left arm could not lift as high as her right.

* * *

She thought nothing of the odd exchange for days afterwards. Aurum had been having a hard enough time managing the mages and the information that Leliana’s spies were bringing in. They had the location of where Corypheus would move next – the only other place with a eluvian mentioned as existing in living memory.

The Temple of Mythal.

A sacred place of her People, lost for centuries, but apparently when you have an army of spies and the backing of the very institution that destroyed your People’s cultural and social structure, anything is possible.

Aurum had hardly anything left in her to give after a near week of frantic preparations. Cullen’s return with his own contingent of men went by nearly without notice. The men needed to rest for the few days they had before the information from Leliana’s spies could be verified and the armies of their allies could be mustered. If this was going to be where Corypheus attempted to enter the Fade, they would need all the help they could get.

She spent more time at her desk, reading reports and pouring over her own maps that Leliana had had a cartographer draw up for her so that she could work on plans in private. She did not expect the entire army to follow her into the Temple, and if she was being honest, she did not _want_ them all in the Temple. The thought sent searing lances of _fury_ through her chest and no matter how she tried, she could not tamp it down.

Solas was no help. Sera was even less help. Yalain had been so long in the Circle that by her own admission, she knew little of the stories anymore. Dalish, of the Chargers, asked quietly for Aurum to not bring it up again, and Aurum had no want to cause the woman any further distress by inquiring further.

She was a Dalish mage, a Keeper of a motley of a Clan, faced with the knowledge that she would have to infiltrate what could very well be the absolute last bastion of the sacred for her people in order to stop a great evil, and she had no one to turn to.

Aurum knew she was isolating herself for no good reason. She knew she should reach out to Dorian, to anyone else who wasn’t elvhen, but she couldn’t find it in herself to do that.

It was late, late in the night, and she was fading in and out of awareness. She had burned the lines of the map into her eyes, and every time she blinked, she could still see it. Resting her head in her hands, Aurum did her level best to not succumb to the upwelling of panic in her chest.

This mission was so much more than anything else she had faced yet. The Winter Palace was just a bunch of shems throwing a stupid party, and Haven had been a disaster anyway. This was taking an army and pressing them against the wall of a place that no one but the most devout should ever have the chance to see.

Aurum was so focused, and so lost in her thoughts that she did not hear her door open. In fact, there was another person in her room long enough for them to remove their heavy armor and wedge their sword against the door. She did not look up, did not acknowledge them and that worked just fine. Heavy boots were placed carefully by the bedside table, and a large plate of food atop it.

On catspaws, the new visitor slowly advanced on Aurum. There was even a moment where the Inquisitor looked up, nodded and went back to her work. The action was purely instinctive, the product of too many hours of work and a mind that was not keen enough to recognize what was going on around her. So the approach was not noted with anything more than that cursory glance, and when he stood behind her, she gave no indication of noticing.

Slowly, carefully, he went over everything he had been told as he tugged his gloves off and let the gloves drop to the floor.

Aurum was still bent over the paperwork she had spread out all over her desk, and as carefully as he could manage, he leaned over her and reached up to brush the broad pad of his thumb across the upper lobe of her ear.

The Inquisitor stiffened in her chair, sitting up straighter, her mouth opening to scold whoever was daring to touch her without her permission.

He had anticipated this, and quickly dipped his head down to her ear so he could press a firm kiss to her other ear as he carefully rasped his fingernail down her ear. As he pulled away from the kiss, he made sure to hiss a breathy “ _Aurum_ ” at her.

She relaxed against him, leaning back against her chair.

“ _Cullen_.”

He smiled and kissed her cheek.

“I missed you, Aurum…Let me take care of you?”  he murmured, carefully tugging on her earlobes.

Aurum smiled, and nodded, her eyes already half-closed. There was no easy way to describe what it felt like to have Cullen behind her, gently touching and tugging and playing with her ears as she sat there. It was soothing, immensely so, because it was a comforting act, and a nice reminder that she did have him around. He was close to her and showing affection as any other Dalish would have done. The sounds, and the miniature tingles of pleasure that emanated from wherever he touched her ears made her sigh. Her brain was going fuzzy, filled with nothing but the sounds of Cullen’s fingers on her ears.

When he gently, gently, _gently,_ rolled his thumb behind her earlobe and tugged forward, folding her ear ever so softly, Aurum couldn’t help the small sound of surprise and pleasure that slipped from her mouth. Her head dropped back against Cullen’s stomach to let him have better access to her ears.

Cullen was thrilled to see her eyes half-closed and rolling in time with the steady swipes of his fingers against her ears. Dalish had spent much time with him, coaching him on how best to do such a thing as this for his Aurum, constantly mentioning that if done well, he could easily send her to sleep or at the very least get her to relax to the point of absolute comfort and satisfaction. He had been so very unsure if Dalish was simply trying to get him slapped, but here Aurum was, calm and pliant beneath his hands, smiling lopsidedly up at him and sighing his name.

He was very aware of his every move. He had to be, in order to make certain that he did not inadvertently hurt her. But Aurum let him cradle her head in his hand, and went so far as to nuzzle his palm as he continued to play with her ears. She trembled when he leaned down to kiss her ear again.

“A-ah, Cullen…” she mumbled as he nibbled on her earlobe.

He hummed at her, pressing another kiss behind her ear. Cullen smiled as she arched up, searching for any more contact. He gave her none, but did bend lower so he could open his mouth wide and bite at the side of her neck. Only hard enough to apply pressure, to let her feel his teeth against her skin, and Aurum keened.

“Relax, my Aurum,” he growled into her skin.

He had only wanted to help her relax. He only wanted to get her to eat, to help her get to sleep. The week had worn on her, and he had just wanted to be kind to her. Aurum was gasping his name, pressing herself against his mouth and hands. And he wanted more. Cullen did his best to swallow his desire down, to be respectful of her certain exhaustion…and was doing a very good job as soon as he pulled away from the delightful softness of her neck.

Cullen focused completely on her ears, stroking, rubbing, touching, pinching, twisting, folding, pulling them, delighting in her every minute squirm and wiggle.

“Cullen, ma’vheraan, sathan!” Aurum cried, pressing her head back against his stomach, seeking more touch.

The relaxation that had bubbled in her chest was quickly fading into passioned fire, and she wanted _more_.

Cullen’s hands slid down the sides of her neck and Aurum gasped as he hesitantly, slowly, circled her neck with his fingers. He held his breath, and she held hers. Cullen could feel her pulse pounding against his fingers, and his knees went weak. Aurum did not move, allowing the hold. He wasn’t choking her, wasn’t putting any pressure on her skin, but his hands were there, and there was this surging feeling in her chest that felt like lightning and tasted like fire.

He held his hands in place for a heartbeat longer.

And then he realized what he was doing and tore his hands away from her neck. Cullen sucked in a frantic breath of air from in between his clenched teeth, fully prepared to babble an incoherent apology because he had – he had _overstepped_ again, obviously overstepped and Aurum, Maker, Aurum was going to –

She stood up quickly, kicking her chair out of the way as she spun on Cullen. He brought his hands up to defend himself against what could rightfully be an attack, but Aurum surged into his arms, smashing her lips to his in a clumsy, overzealous kiss. The impact of her body against his made him stumble backwards, and she forced the movement, rushing him up against the wall and pinning him there.

Aurum kissed him ferociously, grabbing at his wrists and shoving them up against the wall. Cullen moaned lowly, opening his mouth to her tongue. He kept his hands where she had pushed them and thrusted his hips weakly against hers.

“Aurum, Aurum, please, I _want_ ,” he moaned into her mouth.

He wanted, and he wasn’t certain what it was that he wanted, but he wanted, and he wanted so acutely that it felt like he was burning.

“ **Take** , ma’vheraan,” she purred against his lips.

Cullen groaned and picked her up, driving her back towards her desk, where he dropped her unceremoniously atop the work she had been staring at for hours. Aurum squeaked, laughing at how her evening had turned out, but then Cullen was kneeling down and pulling her leggings down off of her body. She hiccupped in surprise as Cullen dove into the crux of her legs.

She buried her hands in his hair, rolling her hips against his mouth. Cullen moaned loudly and dug his fingers into her thighs, pulling her closer to his mouth. Aurum keened, leaning backwards on her desk, propping herself up on her right elbow, and keeping her left hand firmly buried in Cullen’s hair. Cullen pulled back from her slit the slightest bit to rub his scruff against her thighs, not stopping until the skin there was red and hot against his cheek.

Aurum was squirming, jerking her hips towards his face, demanding his attention again. He returned to his work with gusto, suckling her pearl, rolling it between his teeth. Aurum howled his name, moaning lasciviously. Her legs shook against his ears and he gripped her thighs tighter, pulling her closer to him, demanding that she succumb to him.

She had no choice, no way to escape and _Creators_ was she fine with that.

Until there was a frantic knock at her door. Cullen looked up from between her legs, his brow furrowed and his eyes narrow. He stared intently at the door, turning his head ever so slightly to afford himself a clear line of sight.

“Aurum?” he growled, leaning up to bite her hip.

“ _Lady Inquisitor?!_ ”

Aurum huffed, and turned to look over her shoulder, struggling for words. She had been riding an orgasmic high, nearly come to the cusp of pleasure and now – now – she was left trying to find words as a poor confused page tried to deliver more missives for the Inquisitor.

Cullen grumbled, and stood. Aurum looked back to him, confused. Cullen tugged at his belt, freeing it. Aurum looked up sharply, her mouth dropping open.

“Yes?” Cullen whispered.

“ _Yes_ , sathan!”

He grabbed her by the hips and spun her around. Cullen kicked her legs out wide, leaving her leaning atop her desk, looking over her shoulder at him, eyes dark with desire. Cullen cupped the back of her head and pushed, forcing her to look forward as he freed his cock from his trousers.

“ _Lady Inquisitor?_ ”

Aurum didn’t respond, too consumed with the anticipation of Cullen’s next move. He kept one hand on the back of her head, and not-so-gently grabbed her hip with the other as he started slowly sliding into her again.

She gasped, burying her face in the crook of her elbow, trying to remain quiet while the poor page continued knocking. Cullen tugged on her hair, delighting in the play of her muscles and gasping moans as he slowly started to thrust. Aurum bit her forearm, trying to stay quiet as Cullen set all of her nerves alight all over again.

“ _…Inquisitor_?”

“She’s **_busy_** , Jim. Leave the notes there or take them to Sister Leliana,” Cullen barked.

The page stammered something that could have been an apology and Cullen’s name, then title, then a deferential _In-quisitor!_ before they scampered away.

“Fucking _finally_ ,” Cullen growled, yanking harder on her hair and driving into her.

He did not know where this dark desire had come from, but it was _here_ now and he had Aurum beneath him, writhing as he held her down and **fucked** her. He never wanted to stop, and Maker, he had all night with her. His hips stuttered arrhythmically and Aurum clenched around him, and with a shout loud enough for the poor, traumatized page to hear down the hall, he came.

Aurum was gasping by the time he came back to himself, whimpering and whining and twitching beneath him. Cullen drew back tearing his clothes off and leaving them in a horribly messy pile behind her desk. Aurum was slower to push herself up, but did so and slowly pulled her tunic off.

“Good evening, Cullen,” she purred, turning to him with a smile on her face. “What brings you to my room tonight?”

Uneasily, he looked to the tray of now cold food by her bed, and reached up to rub the back of his neck.

“Dinner? Maybe a backrub…I got distracted,” he confessed, blushing just the slightest bit.

“Well then let us see what we can salvage. And…sleep. Will you sleep with me?”

Cullen paused, thinking, before shrugging and nodding with a wide smile.

Aurum reached her arms out to him, and Cullen gathered her into his arms. In a show of gallant extravagance, Cullen swept Aurum off her feet and walked her to her bed, throwing her down on the bed and crawling in next to her. He wrapped himself around her, nuzzling her neck and pulling her close to him.

She chirred at him, reciprocating his affection and wiggling to get under the covers. Cullen mumbled something under his breath and pulled her tight to him. They cuddled, and in that moment, there was nothing else in all of Thedas except them.

And that was beautiful.


	44. The Forest

The Inquisiton took its sweet time rousing itself for battle.

Aurum did not oversee much of the actual soldiers’ preparations, as she was rather well focused on the exhausting task of managing her mages. The responsibility fell squarely on her shoulders and while she reveled in the task she set before herself and her mages, there was a tremble in her chest every time she thought of what they were to do.

She and Cullen saw less and less of each other, even at the War Table, as fighters and soldiers had to be prepared and moved about to leave the bulk of the power going to the Temple, but still not losing the Inquisition’s tenuous toeholds elsewhere in Thedas with a complete lack of presence.

(There was once, as she was hurrying to another meeting with an Orlesian something-or-other that an arm had snaked out of a darkened alcove and pulled her in close. She had only had a second to see the pattern on the vambraces her assailant wore and her protective magic dispelled almost immediately. She followed Cullen gladly into the darkness of the alcove, waving her magic over the area, trying to dispel any unwanted attention as he mouthed her neck and grunted her name into her shoulder as she plucked at his trouser’s laces and urged him inside with hissed pleasure. No one dared mention the flush on the Inquisitor’s cheeks when she arrived at her meeting fifteen minutes late and still breathless.)

The juggling of meetings, planning and still keeping up with training her mages meant sleepless nights over maps and letters, while her days were consumed with constructing armor and weapons for her mages who were riding with her into battle. It was not truly a problem for the Inquisition to outfit so many – there were thousands counted in the forces they had mustered so far, and all of them needed armors and armament.

Her mages were her main concern, though.

No matter what Bull’s Dalish said, Aurum knew in her heart that the most important part of her clan were her mages. And she would do absolutely anything to keep them safe from harm. They were what she would leave behind – they were a continuation of what every Keeper had left behind since the fall of Arlathan. They took the teachings, the practices, the parts of her culture that were not inherently tied to being “fully” Dalish.

She wanted her mages to know that they belonged to her Clan. They were hers and they were precious to her.

Aurum spent what spare time she could find with Dagna and the armorer, churning out armor piece after armor piece, pouring her magic into them to enchant everything she could manage to get her hands on. Her Inner Circle, she was not concerned about, no matter how her heart ached at not having gifted Dorian a staff as Mamala Deshanna ( _her heart still ached_ ) had given her when she had been named First. But she had so many other mages that had nothing except what she as leader of the Inquisition had given them.

So Aurum made half a dozen staffs in every size and shape, with different blades and elemental affinities and let each of her mages choose which one they felt best fit their work. She made lazurite-studded armor, and armor in all sizes that hummed magic against her skin so that none of her mages had to walk uncovered into danger. It was a massive undertaking, one that left her stumbling into her bed, her mind still buzzing with the whispers of the Fade for daring to have exerted herself so hard every night leading up to the Inquisition’s march.

She knew she was running herself absolutely ragged, that she was going to end up doing something that could hurt her.

Aurum couldn’t help herself.

This work had become her compulsion. She could feel the Anchor in her palm burning whenever she hadn’t completely exhausted her magical force throughout her day. In her sleep, it seared the dreamscape of the Fade, leaving her to awaken groggier than when she went to sleep, and her entire left arm would be near unresponsive until she started working her magic once again.

She needed to do this. She _had_ to.

The price she paid in blood and restless nights would be nothing compared to the price that would be put on her soul if her mages died.

In private moments, few though they were, and all too often in the middle of the night as the Anchor spat green fire, she cried out to the Creators who had abandoned her to this Fate. The words of prayers that had once come so easily and tasted like honey had to be grit out through clenched teeth, across a tongue that could only taste the acrid burn of bitterroot. She would have to gasp her pleas for clemency, for another way, for _any_ respite from this burden that had been placed on her shoulders, because she could only draw shuddering breaths until the pain passed her by.

Aurum couldn’t even be certain that she believed in the Creators as the benevolent protectors of the Elvhen. Her faith had been shaken too much already. There were still days where she could not look herself in the mirror without feeling the loss of her vallaslin as acutely as the first night she had awoken to find it missing.

There was cruelty.

And then there was what had been done to her. How could she try and bring herself to believe in those that would do this to her?

The Inquisition, finally prepared began its exodus to the Temple of Mythal, and at the lead, Aurum rode, flanked by her First.

Her massive Hart positively dwarfed the elegant steed Dorian rode, but her Hart dwarfed just about every mount in Dennet’s stables. Aurum engaged in polite conversation with Dorian, smiling despite the concern that still dragged at her thoughts. There was this nagging sense that would not leave her, and it only grew more and more noticeable as they marched ever onwards.

It went beyond the thought of desecrating what last few places of sacred intent remained to her People, she realized as she rode on.

No, the tremble that traveled ever further down her arms as they grew closer to the Temple of Mythal was one of near… _embarrassment._ And it gnawed at her as she travelled with her motley clan. She was leading a clan of humans, qunari, dwarves and elves alike. She claimed them as Clan. She claimed herself Keeper. She had a First who carried her brightly burning blood in his chest as much as she carried his in her own.

But she had never had to claim her Clan in front of other elvhen, and there was a small, nagging part of her that wouldn’t let the nervousness go. She was proud of her Clan, she claimed them wholly and completely and a shemlen wore her Clan’s ring around his neck. But she was not holding any illusions that this would be something that other elvhen Clans would accept as being _real_.

She kept her thoughts to herself, however, and rode on. It was not something to worry about. Not yet. Not when…

No, it _was_ something to worry about, but at another time. In the moment, she was still the Inquisitor and she needed to act as such. Lead her troops, break through to the Temple of Mythal and do everything that was needed for the betterment of all Thedas.

That was the bitterest part of this all. She had to consistently do everything counter to her own culture and upbringing to do what it seemed no one else could.

Rather privately, she thought it was less because she was special or touched by anything fantastic, and more because everyone else had an excuse to escape and pass the responsibility on to someone else instead. She was just the one sucker who couldn’t get away in time.

Aurum tried to push the vicious thoughts away.

 _These people are **mine**_ , she reminded herself as they made their camp deep in the Arbor wilds.

 _They are **mine**_ , she thought as she sat across from some of the scouts who had set a fire for themselves, startling them something terribly as they came face to face with the Inquisitor.

 _They are mine and I will **Keep** them_, was her last coherently her own thought when she heard the cry of terror.

She knew where it came from – she had sent the scouts she had surprised the evening before out in that direction earlier that morning. Aurum grabbed her staff from where it rested next to her in her tent and bolted to her feet. Through the Fade, she heard the panic and fear, and she amplified it, a broadcast to her mages to tell them that there was a problem and they were needed.

Aurum ran from her tent, startling her own personal guards as the half-dressed Inquisitor charged out into the Wilds. She vaulted a fire, using her staff to give herself an extra few inches of clearance to make certain she was not burned.

Her mages had been trained in how to sense the broadcasting of danger. It was not as accurate as the thought-speak some Keepers had with their First, a particular skill Aurum had never cultivated, but she could sing danger and they could find her. She had originally hoped that there would be another mage in her menagerie of a Clan that would pick up the skill to made the Fade hum just loud enough for others to hear, but it seemed as if it would only be her singing danger for a while longer.

All around the camp, as she started charging towards the sound of danger, she heard the warning go up as her mages heard the danger-song reverberate through them. They knew what to do – rouse those near them, prepare for battle, rally to the Inquisitor. Defend your clan, come to her aid!

Aurum knew they were behind her, knew they were coming to help her, and she would be able to defend those who had been injured.

The verdant green of the forest flashed past as she ran, avoiding rock and snarling root with sure steps. It did not matter that she had not been this deep in the forest, it did not matter that this was untreaded land to her, because she had to protect those who trusted her and she could nearly taste their fear on her tongue. She was going to protect them.

 _That_ was her duty. Sworn and sworn again, that was her duty.

Aurum’s teeth felt too large in her mouth, sharp and pointed as her wolf-form rose up in her blood. This was a hunt and she was going to ruin whatever it was that was hurting her Clan.

Razor-sharp leaves slashed at her arms – she had forgotten her armor and was wearing nothing more substantial than a tunic and light leggings. No shoes. She left smears of blood in her wake, and she could not bring herself to care about that. Not when there was danger afoot.

She found her scouts, huddled together, defensive in the face of what they had found. Her position was in front of them, and she took it with all the grace and finality of a Keeper, planting her staff in the wet earth behind her and raising her head to stare down whatever it was that was threatening her people. Magic hummed in the air around her as she let her power mantle around her. These were her people and she was going to protect them.

Aurum had expected red templars, expected something from Corypheus’ get, but what she saw instead had her straightening her back and pulling herself to her fullest height.

Two dalish hunters stood, bows drawn and arrows readied, and from the way they recoiled from her, they were familiar enough with the stance of a Keeper to recognize that they had, perhaps, attacked the wrong people. For a long moment, Aurum said nothing, watching the both of them with the utmost care, not letting her presence in the Fade, fade away. If they were here to bring harm to her Clan, she would not hesitate, even if they were of her People.

But she really did not want to harm her People.

There was not any way out of this unless they relaxed their weapons. She would not back down, not even the very slightest bit if they were still going to be a threat.

One of the hunters brought their bow to bear on her, and between one moment and the next, the bow the hunter held was in shattered pieces on the ground next to them. Dorian ran into the clearing, his hands alight with the arcane power he bore. Aurum did not turn her gaze from the Hunters, but shifted her shoulders so that Dorian could take up a position next to her, still in front of the two now less-cowering scouts.

It would be very rude to cower in fear when the Inquisitor herself was staring down your opponents.

A massive crashing sound through the underbrush heralded Hashera’s charge into the fray. Her head was down, and her delightfully beautiful horns were tearing branches and vines to the side. Hashera took a spot behind Aurum, to her left, standing with no weapon, but the way shocking blue lightning arced around her arms made it clear that she did not need her staff to be a threat.

“I would speak to your Keeper, Hunters,” Aurum said evenly, not breaking eye contact with the elves in front of her.

“( _This one would ask something they have no right to,_ )” one of the Hunters hissed to the other in snide Elvhen.

“( _Perhaps those ones should mind their tongues. I am Keeper Tarasyl’an Tel’as, Blood Lavellan. You will show respect. I would speak with your Keeper, Hunters._ )”

Aurum’s response was elevated, speaking in the higher tongue of Elvhen, the formal tongue spoken only in the midst of Clans. She spoke it flawlessly, as was her birthright to do so. She was Elvhen.

“( _You speak the Tongue, but you have no Marks. Why would we believe you._ )”

Aurum blinked. That was unexpected. She had expected that it would be the Necromancer and the Qunari that would make the Hunters balk, not her lack of tattoos.

She waited a few moments, mulling over the words of the Hunters. They stared down Aurum, small sneers hovering around the corners of their mouths. She felt, more than saw, her other mages and many of the soldiers of the Inquisition. It was her chance to smirk at the Hunters she was facing. This was her Clan and she was going to demonstrate the exactness of the Hunter’s error to them.

“ _(I am Elarsulahaja, and you **will** call your Keeper to me or I shall call them myself._ )”

Her words were the Keeper’s declaration and the world around her trembled at the force of intent behind her words. The air was heavy with her power, and when she moved to advance on the Hunters, they blanched. Their ears dropped, and they turned their heads away from her. Aurum could swear that she saw one of them flinch, and her grin turned feral.

“( _You will show me your Keeper, immediately. I am here on official business and you will **not** stay in my way any longer._ )”

The Hunters did not seem too pleased, but Aurum did not let up her assault, letting the entirety of her Song fill the air, overwhelming any potential for backtalk. She was the beginning and ending of all things. She was the Singer.

She was the Song.

* * *

The Hunters had lead her, Dorian, and Hashera on a winding path through the wilds their Clan inhabited. Aurum had given instruction to the other soldiers and mages that had gathered at the warning call to return to camp and prepare it to receive distinguished guests on rank with the Empress. She had gained some odd looks for that statement, but the next highest ranking officer nodded gravely when they saw how intensely Aurum was staring down the gathered soldiers.

But that was a while ago, and now, the Hunters were leading them on a circumambulatory route through the greenery. Aurum could easily find her way back to the Inquisition’s camp, if pressed, but she knew that Dorian and Hashera would be incredibly lost incredibly quickly.

Aurum understood why the Hunters were doing what they were doing. They were trying to defend their clan, and if Aurum’s Clan was not as massive as it was, she would do the same on the way back. But it would take no real effort to find her Clan. They were a huge, sprawling encampment currently playing pat-a-cake with other huge sprawling encampments. She was not worried about this other Clan being a threat to hers. The Inquisition would crush them.

She did not wish that upon the other Clan, but it would be a foregone conclusion if they tried anything.

“( _Stay here_ ,)” one of the Hunters said, still insisting upon Elvhen.

Aurum nodded. The insistence on the Tongue was the least irritating thing any of the Elvhen could think to do. Was she a little peeved on behalf of Hashera and Dorian, who were not fluent in Elvhen (though Dorian was working on it)? Of course. It was a rudeness to speak in a language they did not all share, and Aurum would, eventually, make that clear.

She stood, at ease, in the forest, waiting. Dorian and Hashera remained silent on either side of her. There were questions they had, she was sure, but for now, she needed to wait for the Keeper to make their appearance.

“Andaran atish’an, Keeper Elarsulahaja.”

The voice came before she could see the speaker, but gracefully, Aurum inclined her head.

“A pleasure, Keeper. Please, I have not the honor of your name.”

“My people do not give names so freely in mixed company, Elarsulahaja.”

Aurum’s ears twitched.

“In that case then, I present my First, Dorian once of Pavus, now of Tarasyl’an Tel’as, Blood Lavellan, and Hashera of Tarasyl’an Tel’as, my Second. My company is as mixed as my Clan and I respectfully ask that you consider them as you would consider any of the People, as they are mine own.”

The Keeper did not nod or give any outward indication of surprise or displeasure.

“We shall consider this, Elarsulahaja. Kindly, come sit and talk with us.”

 Aurum nodded once, and gestured for the opposing Keeper to lead the way. There was, after all, much to talk about. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry about how long this took. I promise I didn't forget this fanfic, but work was tits the past few weeks and killed my creative drive. I AM BACK NOW HOWEVER. We will return to your regularly scheduled smut and angst now.


	45. The Last Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for this taking so long. I really, really am - real life got kinda terrible for these last couple of months and I wasn't feeling much like writing. To make up for it, a incredibly long chapter and the official notice that we are going to be starting the arc of this story that I've been most anticipating for this entire story. 
> 
> I hope you all like it. Let me know!

The Inner Circle and a few circles removed from there were gathered as they had been instructed to be. Hashera and Dorian had returned hours ago, bearing messages from Aurum, full of instructions on how to prepare for the other Clan’s arrival and what would be expected of them all. It had been made abundantly clear and while it was completely outside the boundaries of Fereldan, Tevene, or Orlesian custom, as soon as the First and Second had begun to explain things, Yalain and Dalish from Bull’s Chargers came forward to help…and after that, more dalish-born mages and scouts came forward, assisting in giving more information for the preparations.

Which is how that it came to pass that Cullen, Leliana, and Josephine were seated at the apex of a half-circle that was comprised of the other members of the Inner Circle, all the mages, and those few non-elves who wished to be present. All of them had been asked to remove weapons and armor, which had more than a few soldiers shifting nervously from side to side. They anticipated a red templar ambush, or something worse, somehow.

Not even Cullen was immune from feeling odd without his armor on. Even in halfway formal attire (“do not bother with the extravagances of Orlais, they’re not near as impressive as you would like to think”, Yalain had said) he felt naked without a weapon or the comfort of heavy armor holding him in. Next to him, Leliana shuffled uncomfortably as well, reaching for where the ghosts of daggers had left permanent points of reference on her body. They were missing. She felt naked.

But Yalain and Dalish and all the others had insisted at such great length that all of them had complied.

The Empress Celene had abstained, unwilling to be in the presence of so many without armed guards. Yalain’s lip had curled cruelly, and Dalish had tightened her hands until her nails had cut little crescents into her palms, but they said nothing.

The organization of the circle of those who had expressed a desire to be there was carefully overseen as well, with everyone given very specific seats and some manner of explanation of what to expect.

“The Keeper will be coming shortly. This is going to be very much unlike anything most of you will have ever seen. Please, despite what happens, do not interject. She will indicate if she needs any of you. To the humans and non-Dalish, please understand that…this is one of the very few things that we have kept. And our Keeper needs us to be good for her,” Bull’s Dalish said quickly, looking over her shoulder every few moments to ensure that she would not be speaking when Aurum returned.

Yalain nodded, but very quickly stepped forward.

“Be – be also aware that you _may_ hear something…more than you are expecting. Do not be afraid, and if you are, let her know. She will comfort you.”

Dalish gaped at Yalain, but the elder elf merely waved the younger’s concern away. Cullen almost – _almost_ – asked after what they meant, reaching up to indicate his question when both women had stiffened, flinching at a sound their ears tracked backwards towards the forest.

Quickly, the both of them darted out of the circle, almost guiltily taking up positions on the outside of the circle. Bull’s Dalish, especially, looked as if she was fully expecting some manner of outrageous lambasting for her transgression. Before Cullen could question _that_ , he heard –

A sigh went through the gathered people as a _song_ burst through the hushed whispers.

Cullen remembered that he had once asked Aurum to sing for him, and she had balked after he had not been able to handle her Presence in the Fade, saying it would be too much. He hadn’t understood why until now, when he had swirls and patterns of color dancing across his vision and the soft not-voice whispering at the corners of his senses. If he did not know it was Aurum, if he was not so absolutely certain that this was _her_ magic, he would panic.

Panic was still there, a tinge of fear and uncertainty, but when he saw Aurum striding forward, with Dorian and Hashera flanking her, he forgot it.

He forgot everything except the way his breath caught in his throat and…the way other parts of him responded to seeing her cloaked in power.

This was the truest extent of Aurum’s power, worn not out of obligation or fear, or need to protect, but…simply as herself. He stared, with the rest of the Inquisition that had chosen to stay to see this, heart hammering in his chest, as Aurum walked into the center of the circle they had prepared. Dorian and Hashera politely excused themselves from the circle, seating themselves to the side of Cullen and Josephine.

Aurum turned gracefully, her hands coming up in supplication.

She bowed, and Cullen’s eyes dipped and he was reminded of the Winter Palace when he had wanted to give a bag of sovereigns to the designer of that outfit…and now he found himself in need of another bag of sovereigns. He swallowed the lump in his throat and did his best to pay attention.

“Andaran atishan, Amelon,” Aurum said softly, extending her hand out to the other elves who appeared out of the forest like wraiths.

Cullen lost the rhythm of the Dalish words, but the song that surrounded them all made it easy enough to catch the meaning, regardless. Aurum was welcoming the Clan, greeting their Keeper and inviting them to sit and enjoy the festivities for the night. To enjoy…her?

He was not certain if he understood that last part correctly.

There were responses, all lyrical and soft in the way of the Dalish. But Cullen was finding it harder and harder to pay attention to them because, well, Aurum was standing there, shining and regal in front of her Clan – in front of him. He ached for her in ways he was not wholly unfamiliar with, but this was not the time for that. He had to put his feelings aside for a little while longer. He didn’t want to interrupt.

The Keeper of the other Clan bowed in return to Aurum, and slowly, their Clan filtered in to fill in the other half of the circle. Aurum smiled, an open and warm expression that Cullen honestly could not ever remember seeing come so easily to her face.

_Maker she looks so beautiful._

Aurum gave what could only be interpreted as a Dalish danseur’s bow, extending a hand to the other Keeper, and for a moment, there was silence. The song that danced around Aurum had faded.

With a grin, the other Keeper inclined their head and took Aurum’s hand. Aurum’s grin gentled and she stepped close to the other Keeper, an older elf whose gender was indeterminate at first glance. Almost as if expecting the next step, the Keeper tilted their head towards Aurum’s, their mouth half-open and eyes lidded. Aurum leaned into the invitation, her mouth dancing dangerously, tauntingly close to the other’s mouth, lips parted.

(Cullen grabbed at his knees very hard to keep from springing forward at the intimacy offered to another.)

Suddenly, there was a song again, whispering at the back of everyone’s mind, and there was magic gathering in the space between Aurum and the other Keeper’s lips. The magic glowed, shimmering with power and might. Cullen watched, along with all others, with rapt attention, as Aurum swallowed the magic down into her. The power illuminated her skin and throat, leaking light out of her body, casting eerie light over the pair of them.

The song gained volume, and then they were _dancing_ , a savage give and take of space and movement.

The other Keeper invaded first, their leg sliding between Aurum’s as they leaned into her, and she leaned away. Their dance started with quick steps and long slides of their legs. Aurum seemed wholly unperturbed, moving with the Keeper despite the erratic movements, matching flawlessly whatever the other was doing, careful to keep their lips close as the magic hummed between them. Flickers of magic danced in the air between them, echoing their every step. There was a breathless gasp that echoed around the circle.

Cullen saw Aurum smirk, and he bit his lip. The magic was overwhelming, a physical weight in the air around them, shimmering green like the Fade Rifts Aurum closed. He did his best to pay attention to the dance itself, and not just stare at the lines of Aurum’s body, but it was very difficult. The dance was hard to put into Fereldan or Orlesian sensibilities, even as he noted all the Dalish in attendance prick their ears up in concert as a crescendo overtook the song.

It was only then that Aurum spun away from the other Keeper, evading their grasp as she darted to the lip of the circle, reaching for one of the Clanmembers of the other Keeper and twining her long fingers through their hair and _kissing them_ , her mouth sealing across theirs as the light in her flesh vanished into the other.

Next to him, Josephine made a surprised squeak and covered her mouth. The song grew louder as Aurum danced back into the circle. This time, her dance was less suited to manage two, so she danced alongside the Keeper, her magic flickering tighter around her, as she danced and her magic sang. She stepped, dipped, slid and moved in time with the other Keeper. Magic still shimmered in the air around them both, heavy and opulent like the power of the long-off Elvhen Nations that burned in their blood.

Aurum’s face was glowing with absolute rapture as she sang magic and danced power. Echoes of her movements traced in hovering lights, giving just enough illumination to the circle to make Aurum absolutely entrancing. Wreathed in glowing power, dancing to the beat of magic and power, she let herself be filled to the brim with the **SONG** that burned in the Keeper.

 _This isn’t enough_.

The song was a ravenous thing, demanding more be given to it. Aurum was just a focal point, a concentration nodule, a way for the song to have an audience in something more than just the dreaming of the Fade.

The Keeper bowed out, and their Song faded out and Aurum stood in the center of the circle, wreathed in power, waiting for the next dancer to come and offer their Song to her. She could taste the power of the Keeper on the back of her teeth and it made her ache for me.

Someone slid into the Circle, offering their Song to Aurum. Aurum turned to the intruder, feeling their Song rise in the back of her throat.

So, first, then, the kiss –

Aurum reached a hand out and Bull’s Dalish took it. She dipped her head, seeking the notes of the song to be given so she could show Bull’s Dalish just what she was capable of together. Bull’s Dalish leaned up against her, digging her fingers into Aurum’s forearms. Aurum could feel her shaking already as she breathed her song and her question.

The song did not hesitate, rumbling up out of Aurum’s chest. She knew what to do, what Bull’s Dalish needed to experience in that moment. She needed Aurum to show her what she could be, if she only let go of her limitations and fear and embraced the yawning void in her. It was a common issue. Aurum could fix that.

Bull’s Dalish looked up at her, eyes full of tears.

“ _Please_.”

Aurum sneered and let the song fill her to the brim. The air around them both crackled with power and magic that took the form of bright blue lightning. Bull’s Dalish stared for a moment as the world shivered around them. Aurum did not move, her body tense and trembling while she waited.

There were only a few beats where the song could be held and the song did not hold well. It had an out, it had a Singer and one who wished to hear the song. Aurum’s eyes burned and she waited – waited – and when the song roared in her ears and leaked out of her to vibrate the air around her –

Bull’s Dalish sang first.

Tearing her eyes away from Aurum, Bull’s Dalish started her own _verbal_ song, a frantic slur of elvhen, as she pulled her magic in a tight circle. It manifested as lightning that arced in a tight circle around her. Aurum didn’t even flinch, letting the magic pass within a hairsbreadth of her skin, before the Song overtook her. She moved liked the storm that Bull’s Dalish preferred, darting around the other mage so she could take up a position behind her.

Snarling, Aurum pushed on Dalish’s hip, forcing her to fall into the dance. Lightning snapped through the air as they danced. The earth trembled as they stepped in time with each other. Aurum gnashed her teeth when Dalish stepped meekly, and grabbed her by the hips to guide the next step.

Dalish practically tried to wilt out of Aurum’s grasp, but Aurum held her still, forcing her to hear the song and _acknowledge_ it. Dalish whimpered and Aurum made the song _louder_ , demanding that Dalish **listen** , because this had been what Dalish had wanted, and she could not shy away from it now that the song had begun.

But Dalish resisted still, shying away from the raw power that Aurum felt in the song, and the sound that ripped out of the deep core of power that lived in her was enough to set the gathered peoples’ nerves on end. The sound was akin to the roar of thunder breaking overhead, and came with the jagged, buzzing sound of lightning reverberating against windows. She was, in that moment, _the_ primal force in the forest, and when she moved, magic snapped and snarled in her wake.

The world seemed dimmer around the circle now that Aurum was singing, and when the storm in her chest exploded into bright lines of lightning that coalesced above her skin, there was a hushed hiss from the crowd. The lines held in place, hovering over where she had once born the tattoos of Hunter and Wolf. Bull’s Dalish stared, her ears low and eyes wide with shock. Aurum whipped her head around to stare Bull’s Dalish down, and when she opened her mouth, more lightning crackled between her teeth.

The song had its demands and Aurum would make them known. This was the Song Bull’s Dalish had in her heart, and Aurum would let it be known.

Again, Aurum advanced on Bull’s Dalish, and she held her ground this time, staring up at Aurum, her own storm finally rising in time with Aurum’s.

Victory made Aurum’s face split wide as she turned away from Bull’s Dalish. She stalked towards where her advisors sat, and Cullen bit his cheek until he tasted blood. Aurum’s eyes were _burning_ blue, and the way she moved as she walked had the deep part of his primal self terrified and horrifyingly aroused. She carried power in her steps, an immense sense of space and force that reminded him of the awe he felt at the first time he beheld a _proper_ Chantry.

She was sublime, in the truest expression of the word.

Aurum turned her eyes from him, to Leliana next to him, and he felt the Spymaster nearly recoil as if someone had threatened to hit her. Aurum’s eyes gentled, and the power overwhelming receded into something more manageable to look upon. Leliana relaxed only fractionally, staring up at the Inquisitor with eyes that, for whatever reason, brimmed with tears.

Aurum leaned down, bending gracefully at the waist, and Leliana reached for her, the Sister’s fingers brushing the back of Aurum’s neck. Cullen did his best to not move any more than he had to because that was…that was definitely Aurum kissing Leliana, their mouths slanted across each other’s. Power passed between them, and for a brief flash, Leliana was lit with the power of Storm and Thunder.

The song lost its manic edge, and when Aurum turned back to Bull’s Dalish and inclined her head, Dalish grinned at her. Aurum danced back to the middle of the circle, and Dalish, oh Dalish joined her.

Lightning boomed, pulled down from the heavens by two mages, and it spun in deliriously tight circles around them as they _danced_. In unison, they danced, dragging lightning along with their steps and twists. Cullen had to remember how to breathe. Next to him, Leliana still glowed, her hands fisted in the fabric of her tunic. Her entire body was bowstring-taut, and she watched the dance with bated breath.

Without any manner of consulting between the two of them, Aurum and Bull’s Dalish moved in perfect concert, each commanding their own magic, each dancing to the same song. The song set the air to vibrating, and with the lightning crowding the space, the performance was literally electrifying.

The dance ended with a huge burst of lightning that arced between the two of them before finally vanishing.

It felt like everyone gathered exhaled all at once as Aurum relaxed and grinned lopsidedly at Bull’s Dalish. In return, Bull’s Dalish bowed low, nearly folding herself in half and holding the position for a heartbeat too long before rising.

“Thank you,” Bull’s Dalish said gently, before reaching for Aurum’s hand so she could press a quick kiss to Aurum’s knuckles.

Aurum inclined her head gracefully, and watched as Bull’s Dalish left the circle.

For long seconds no one outside the circle moved, as if everyone was waiting for something else to happen. Nothing else seemed to move or breathe for the entire time Aurum stood unaccompanied in the circle. She was waiting. There were more songs to be sung.

Hesitantly, Hashera stepped into the circle, nervously bobbing her head in a series of short, quick, bows. Aurum tilted her head, and the next song began. There was no kiss this time, no exchange of power in voice. It was not the same for Hashera as it had been for Bull’s Dalish and the Clan’s Keeper. The bow was enough, and she acknowledged that.

Hashera’s song was one of Ice and power, but the hesitance that hummed in Hashera’s song was not the same as the one in Bull’s Dalish. Hashera was a Vashoth mage, one who had had to run from the Circles as much as she had, but with the added weight of her parents constantly, constantly on the watch out for the Qunari who would have taken her back to Seheron…and then taken her tongue.

Hashera was a mage, powerful and regal, but her entire life had been spent in fear that someone would come for her magic, come to take her away, and that had lead to …this moment in her song. This moment, where she was standing across from Aurum, her brows furrowed with worry and anxiety. She had seen what Aurum had done so far, but there burned a Question in Hashera’s heart, and she would have an answer from Aurum.

Aurum was happy to give it.

The song was a call and response one, one that had Aurum begin, pulling frost out of the air and stepping into a martial dance.

Form and function, and Hashera and Aurum dancing together. Aurum would move through a form, her body moving sharply, powerfully, emulating the raw power that Hashera carried in her own body. Aurum was so much shorter than Hashera and smaller of waist and wrist, but when she moved and threw her power behind her movements, it was hard to believe that Aurum was not as massive as the Qunari herself.

Aurum hissed in tandem with Hashera, her pink tongue flattening between her teeth. Hashera flinched, looking at Aurum with her eyes wide.

Under the Qun, they would have taken her tongue.

It was more than a dance of power, it was one of arrogance and pride. Aurum _sang_ when a voice would have been denied her in the Qun. She proudly displayed her tongue, when it would have been cut out of her to try and keep her cowed. She fell into fighting forms as ancient as the pasts of her People, pasts that would have been stripped away and swept underneath the monolithic presence that was the **Qun**. Aurum did all of this, and beholden to the song as she was, she did it because Hashera did it.

Because Hashera had never been tamed. Not by the Circle, not by the Qun.

Her magic roared in Aurum’s ears, a growing symphony of power that demanded it be unleashed. Hashera still followed along with her every move, not mimicking as much as realizing that _this_ was how she was truly meant to move, this was how her magic was meant to act and move.

Morning training sessions had been nothing in comparison to this moment, where her own magic sang so loud that the rest of the world fell away. Hashera bit back her interrupting surprise and accepted it.

Aurum grinned, victorious so quickly in awakening what needed to be found in Hashera in order for her to come to a fuller understanding of what she was.

As she had done all times prior, she slid out of the dance for a moment, and again, she advanced on her Advisors, fractals of ice dancing across her cheeks. Cullen bit his cheek as she came towards them again, trying to catch the breath stuck in his throat. He wanted to have her again, right now but it wasn’t the right time, but _Maker_ , _Andraste_ , **Creators** , he ached for her in ways that shook him to the core.

Aurum knelt down at Cassandra’s feet, someone who Cullen had not taken any notice of until that very moment when his – when Aurum reached for Cassandra.

As Hashera had not kissed her, she did not kiss Cassandra this time, but rather, took Cassandra’s hands in hers and bent her head to press her forehead to Cassandra’s knuckles. In all the time Cullen had known Cassandra, he had never seen her stare so openly. Not even when Hawke had visited Skyhold for those precious few moments had Cass ever relax into a stare so absolutely astonished.

Aurum smiled at Cassandra, ice still creeping across her skin.

Cassandra opened her mouth to say something, but Aurum touched her fingertips to Cassandra’s lips and shook her head. This wasn’t the time for speaking. Not yet, at least. After all of this, there would be time to talk through what was experienced in these moments. But for now, she had a song still burning in her ears, and when she turned back to Hashera, the Qunari was standing confidently in her own power, waiting for Aurum to come back to finish their dance.

With a smile and gentle incline of her head, Aurum pulled her ice up beneath her feet and slid towards Hashera, leaving a trail of ice behind her. After a moment, Hashera figured out the trick to what Aurum was doing with her magic, and then she was on her own ice floe.

Now the duo danced again, leaving trails of ice behind them as they spun and moved around each other. It was still martial, still relied heavily on the strength of their forms and bodies, but it was… _beautiful_. Ice hung in the air, glittering, catching the light from the few torches in the background.

They danced, elegant and powerful, their power humming in time with the beat of the song. They danced with each other, never touching, but clearly dancing together, regardless. Neither of them drew attention away from the other. It was hard to focus on one over the other. Each of them had their own power and force to the song and it was not for any one of them alone in that moment.

But still, the magic eventually faded, and the song dimmed, and the ice melted.

Aurum smiled at Hashera, pride pouring from her every pore. Hashera had done well, had done something impressive and should be widely rewarded for it. If nothing else, Hashera should know just how beautiful she was to Aurum in that moment. The great Qunari woman beamed back, a blush coloring her grey cheeks.

Hashera bowed out of the circle, graceful, but exhausted. Being part of the Song was tiring, draining, everything intense and awe-inspiring all at once. Hashera had had enough for a single evening, but Aurum still heard songs rising around her and before she could even catch her breath she felt the next song rise in her chest.

When she turned, it was Yalain in the circle, kneeling prostrate before the Singer, hands held out in supplication, fire dancing in her palms.

There was a deep-seated pleasure in her chest at the sight, and Aurum leaned down, reaching out to cover Yalain’s hands with her own. Fire danced between her fingers, licking at the delicate, soft webbing of the space in between each of her digits, but she was not burned. No, not by this fire.

Yalain was a Dalish mage, taken after earning her vallaslin in service of Sylaise, forced into a Circle, forced to abandon so much of her heritage and life at such a liminal point in her life, and Aurum could offer something to soothe the hurts. It would be a bitter panacea, what Aurum would give to her. There was so much that Yalain had missed in her long time away from the Clans of her youth.

But Aurum could give her this back.

Aurum would give her more than just something back. There was so much that Yalain had missed out on, and a simple Song would not be enough. Aurum had years to apologize for, years to give Yalain back, and while she could not give the time that Yalain had lost back to her, but Aurum could try regardless.

Carefully, she took the fire cupped in Yalain’s hands into her own, cradling it gently. A new song started, thrumming in beat with the dancing of the flames and with a roguish wink, she let the fire race up her arms, and across her chest.

There was a sharp hiss of surprise from the Inquisition’s half of the circle, as Aurum allowed herself to be wreathed in mystical flame like Sylaise. She danced, slowly and sensual, like the low-kept fires that flickered in the background. Fire chased her movements, highlighting her muscles, her form, everything about her as she danced Fire into the air around her. This was proving nothing except devotion.

It did not matter to Aurum in that moment, that she still harbored doubts in her chest about the Creator. It did not matter that her doubts were gnawing at her chest in the night, nor what sleep she lost, nor anything else. All that mattered was the rapture she saw on Yalain’s face. This was not for her, but for Yalain.

Yalain wanted to see the power drawn down from the heavens, see proof of her belief, her faith, her bloodline and the life she could’ve had, and Aurum wanted to give that to her. So she did, letting the fire race across her skin, leaving her flushed and sweating, and exhausted.

But Yalain still knelt, hands lifted, ears down, eyes wide.

Aurum needed to show her what she had always deserved to see. It didn’t matter if she could feel her fire coming ever closer to burning her skin, Yalain deserved this. Yalain had missed thousands of nights of celebration and fire in the Circle she had been trapped in, and Aurum only had this one dance to give her the fullest expression of what Sylaise’s own could have expected from their magic as they grew.

She felt the sharp pang of loss in her chest at her own vallaslin – she had earned the Bow of Andruil and the Skin of Fen’Harel, and now she had neither.

It didn’t matter. Not in that moment. She was here for Yalain, not to dance her own sorrows out. The Song was Yalain’s, not her own. Yalain had lost so much and Aurum could definitely manage a simple Song and dance for someone who had had so much of her life taken from her. She could find ecstasy in this Song for Yalain.

Aurum threw her head back and danced, leaping high into the air, wreathed in the fire Yalain had summoned. The Song only grew in intensity, and Aurum turned so Yalain could see her, see the magnificence that was Sylaise’s fire. She had studied for years in order to understand and exemplify each of the Creators in their own way through her magic, and Sylaise was hearthfire and home, yes…

She breathed deep, pulling the Song and fire down into her lungs, and then exhaled an eruption of fire, scorching the earth beneath her feet. Yalain’s eyes got wider, and the grin on her face was nearly feral. Aurum let the Song burn through her as she scorched air and ground in equal parts. Sylaise’s fire had always burned the hottest in the old legends, and Yalain knew that. Aurum did not fear the fire, because the Song was in her, but there was something nearly terrifying about how _good_ it felt, how _right_ it was to feel that fire burning through her chest.

But the Song faded as Yalain bowed down to press her forehead to the earth, and the power faded from her chest.

Aurum told herself she was happy to feel the aching void that opened up in the place of all that power.

Breathing heavily, Aurum let the Song fade from her in its entirety. It had been a while since she had Sung like this, and so quickly one after the other. It did take quite a lot out of her after a while. She may be an inordinately strong mage, but as Aurum walked to Yalain to help the elder mage to her feet, she noticed that she was shaking just a little more than she had thought she would.

She had lost quite a bit of her stamina, it seemed.

But it had been a while since the last time hse had performed, and never had she performed so many songs so quickly.

Aurum forgave herself for her exhaustion, helped Yalain to her feet, kissed the elder mage’s temple and escorted her back to her position at the edge of the circle. She herself was about to sit down when she heard another Song starting.

Startled, and mostly interested in sitting down, she turned to the newest singer, ready to politely ask for a few moments of rest.

To her surprise, it was Dorian. Aurum tilted her head to the side, and Dorian, with a gallant grin, he bowed and extended a hand out to her. She took it gladly, and he gently pulled her close, dipping his head down to hers. Magic danced across their lips, and Dorian’s magic was so familiar to her, so familial to her, that she slipped deep into his Song without even needing to think about it.

His magic hummed contentedly, but it did not ask of her to Sing, only to listen with everyone else. Smiling, Aurum was content to do just that, stepping away from him and towards her advisors, kneeling down within the bounds of the circle, but clearly in her position as Singer still, just in case it was needed.

Dorian, clearly, needed no help, however. He wanted to perform as she had done, and Aurum was more than content to rest and watch another mage Sing, even if it still required some small work on her part. Dorian was a divine dancer, a fact that was not shocking to anyone who had spent even a cursory moment around the Tevinter ambassadors. His dance was different than the paired dances that Aurum had been doing, and had a different vibe to it.

Aurum vaguely remembered him making a quip back at Halamshiral about a dance of seven veils or somesuch, and it seemed as if Dorian didn’t need veils at all. Curtains of fire fluttered about him, drawn by his movements and guided by his own magic. She couldn’t help the smile that touched her face, or the way she started tapping out the rhythm to his song. If she could not dance, she could still guide the beat in case he faltered.

Someone in the circle took note of the two-fingered tapping she was doing against her leg and took it up, clapping out the beats Aurum tapped out.

It took almost no time at all for the entire circle to take up the clapping, and while she could hardly hear the song for the noise of the clapping it only took one look at the near-rapture on Dorian’s face for Aurum to forgive the overwhelming of what was a beautiful song. He was performing, he was her _brother_ and she was _proud_ of him.

She watched him dance for a good long while, waiting to see if there was anything she could do or offer his song and performance to improve it, or…

Aurum’s attention was caught by the brush of horns up into her periphery. The Iron Bull had moved, just a little bit, trying to get a better view of Dorian’s dance. Granted, Bull was head and shoulders taller than just about everyone else in attendance and it wouldn’t take much for him to get an eyeful, but his interest in what Dorian was doing piqued hers.

Slowly, carefully, she stood from her seat, doing her best to move without drawing attention to herself. It was Dorian’s dance and Song, not hers, and she did not want to detract from his performance. She only wanted to do what was right by her brother and that was looking more and more like it would involve Bull. Dorian danced, and Aurum watched, and the entirety of their Clan watched.

Keeping the song burning bright in her, Aurum approached Bull. Behind her, wreathed in fire still, Dorian danced. Bull almost didn’t look down at her in time for what she needed, but she had his attention when she reached up to grab at his horn and pull him down to her level.

“You can’t hear well, Bull,” she whispered, her voice not even coming close to clearly audible.

Her thumb skimmed across the tip of his ear, and she rose up on her tip-toes, tilting her head up and back, offering her mouth to him. Bull dipped his head down, his eyes still on Dorian. He didn’t even seem to register Aurum’s mouth coming closer to his own, not until her magic wrapped around his mouth.

Startled, Bull drew back sharply, but Aurum still had a hand on his horn. She held him steady, staring up at him with narrowed eyes.

“Go to Dorian. Dance with him. You can.”

Bull stared at her, his eyes wide.

“…I-“

“No. Go to him. _Go_.”

Bull looked between her and Dorian and swallowed a knot in his throat before he slowly, carefully, stepped into the circle. As Bull entered, Aurum stepped out fully, leaving her own Song and magic behind. Abdicating the song and leaving it to Dorian to sing to Bull. They were well matched, she saw with a small grin. Dorian handled Bull’s arrival in the song and dance with such finesse and grace that Aurum could not help her broad smile.

Dorian danced with Bull, and the whole Clan watched.

When the song ended and Dorian’s fire faded, the entire circle burst into uproarious applause and before anyone could even think to look for Aurum in the crowd, the Dalish Clan had pulled out their own instruments and started a more mundane song and dance for everyone else in attendance. Dancers rushed the circle, uproarious conversation started and the two Clans intermingled. The mages, especially, were quickly surrounded with dozens of curious elven. Aurum watched from the shadows as the interactions carried out, careful to make sure the various cultural taboos were observed. Hers was a mixed Clan like no other and she was worried for clashes of personality and interest, but…

Everyone was being on their best behavior. This was a meeting of two clans and if any of them could remember how catty different Clans would be to each other at Arlathans, they were certainly not making it obvious. There were occasional slight kerfuffles, momentary disagreements between people who did not know too much of each other just then. But all manners were being observed and the cultural differences that were encountered were quickly and quietly handled.

Proud, but tired, Aurum bowed out silently, leaving the revelry for the Clans. She had done her duty and she…she wanted sleep.

The other Keeper and her had had their discussion already and Dorian had sang well enough to be impressive to everyone present, not just Aurum alone, and really, she just wanted to sit down somewhere quiet and relax for a bit before going to sleep. The other Clan had been gained as allies, her First and Second and Third all acknowledged in their own way and everything was beautiful. She just wanted to sit and relax. Parties were well and good and enjoyable when she was in the mood for them, but right now, she really wasn’t.

Her tent was the same as it had been when she had gone to take Suledin’s keep. Nice, a little more ornate than the others in the Inqusition, not nearly as ornate as the one the great Empress used, but warm and comfortable. Aurum lifted the tent flap and dismissed the guards standing outside of her tent with a wave of her still gloved hands. She didn’t fear for anything with another Clan in the same area as hers.

As she always did, she stripped without much care for putting things in a proper place, shrugging out of her tunic with a little more fumbling than normal. As soon as the tunic was on the ground she looked at the scar that marred her left shoulder and chest. Red and inflamed, she had clearly – _clearly_ – come close to nearly tearing it again while she danced. It was not the best thing, especially not with another fight looming on the horizon.

Well, that just brought up a ton of other uncomfortable thoughts, and Aurum was content to, instead, slip into her loose fitting cotton pants and sit down on the cushy rug that hosted the center brazier of the tent.

She considered the lyrium kit she had been given, just in case the next battle wore too hard on her reserves, but it was nothing more than a consideration. Sure, Aurum wanted to run healing fingers over the wound and alleviate the pain she felt emanating from her entire left arm. It seemed the Anchor, even, was content to get in on the aching, and when she finally stripped her glove off, Aurum was faced with the sickly green and yellow fade-fire spitting from her hand once again. Veilfire, Solas and Dorian both called it, memories of flames summoned from the Veil itself to burn anew.

Sneering, she pulled some small amount of magic around her hand, trying to push the veilfire back into the Anchor so it would stop burning her skin. Memory of flame or no, it still hurt and with her shoulder aching as well, Aurum wasn’t quite in the mood to handle it. Of course, like all the other times she had tried, it didn’t work and it left her slightly more put out than she had been moments before entering her tent.

She grabbed onto her left wrist, squeezing as hard as she could to see if she could maybe manage to strangle pain out of her hand before she went to bed for the night.

“Inquisitor?”

Blinking quickly, Aurum stood and turned to the person entering her tent.

To her surprise, it was Cullen standing in her tent’s entryway, is hair mussed and eyes wide. His gaze dropped down to her injured shoulder and veilfire-spitting hand for only a moment, long enough for his brows to draw together and his mouth to twist down.

He was at her side within moments, his gloves discarded to the floor so that he could press his fingers against the scar.

“You hurt yourself…” Cullen said softly. “Are you alright?”

Aurum huffed and tilted her head up, looking for a kiss that Cullen gave her with only a bit of hesitation.

The moment their lips touched, Aurum felt her heart stutter and beat again, finding a new rhythm that she had forgotten lived in her chest. Oh, she was ruined for anyone else. Oh, she wanted him and only him and only ever him. The thought had a groan tumbling out of her mouth before she could stop it. An answer came from somewhere deep in Cullen’s chest, and Aurum melted into him, desperate for touch and contact all at once.

He pulled away from her first and Aurum, unwilling to let go, leaned up to press her forehead to his. Cullen opened his mouth to say something, but Aurum wasn’t quite done. Carefully, she turned her head, not letting her temple leave his. She had to tilt her head further than she would have had to do with any of her elvhen partners, but by the end –

Her ear was pressed against his.

The intimacy of the moment could easily be lost on him, but Aurum trembled. She meant this. She meant this and she meant it completely and the depth of feeling that yawned in her chest nearly scared her.

But it felt right.

It was a scary sort of rightness.

She stood there, ear pressed against Cullen’s, trembling with the intensity of her feelings. Cullen remained still, waiting for an indication of what he should do. He realized that this was probably something very intimate and touching, but did not know what to do or when.

With a sigh, Aurum drew away, a blush painting her cheeks bright pink.

“Aurum?”

“My name amongst my People is Elarsulahaja, Cullen. You can call me that, in private, if you wish.”

The words came out in a near jumbled rush as Aurum tried to get the intensity of feeling that saying them made rise up in her chest. She might not have the courage for three words, but a Name could be just as much as those meant.

The intimacies she offered him were a heady mix of claiming and being claimed and with a great battle looming on the horizon and the memories of Adamant still clinging to the insides of her ribs, she didn’t want to go into this without having said _something_ to Cullen that could tell him how much she thought of him and how much he meant to her.

Thankfully, Cullen did not try and say anything, only tilted her head up and kissed her again, tearing her thoughts away from the rising anxiety in her gut over what would happen – what could happen. There was a deep fear that strangled her when she thought of the Temple hidden in the forest, and if she could only stay _here_ in Cullen’s arms instead, she would gladly traded it all away. He made her feel safe. The press of his armor against her bare skin made her feel protected, the weight of his arms with his bracers on against her hips made her feel grounded and the gentle way he encircled her entire being with his presence made her know that _this_ was home.

No aravel felt right.

No bed felt comfortable.

No hearth was warm.

Not without him.

The elvhen people had lost much in their many, many years-long slide out of glory. But they had never lost the depth and breadth of their emotions. They felt, and felt ravenously for their families and Clans and chosen mates and Aurum didn’t even know who to pray to anymore or if she _should_ but when Cullen held her she knew she was where she belonged.

He kissed her and held her and nothing, _nothing_ else mattered but that.

But all too soon, she knew they would have to part. The camp was full, and unlike the Keep, Cullen could not spend the night and walk out of her tent in the morning with only a few curious onlookers. Their relationship may well already be the worst kept secret of the Inquisition (if Varric’s incessant eyebrow-waggling meant anything) but that was only amongst the walls of Skyhold, not in a company that numbered like a true army, with the Empress and other important patrons of the Inquisition in attendance. Josephine had enough of a hard time right now, she did not need Aurum adding onto it.

They parted, and each could taste words unsaid on their parting breath.

Her courage wavered, and even though she _knew_ she could say it, she _knew_ that it would be a good moment, on the eve of battle to make this her moment, when Cullen stepped away from her, she stepped back as well, the words failing on her tongue. He also seemed as if there was something on his mind, but he too, said nothing.

Not until a loud shout of a reveler broke the awkward silence, startling both of them. Cullen reached for his absent sword, and Aurum had a spell dancing on her fingers before either of them could register that there was no actual danger to them in that moment.

Nervously, both relaxed, laughing at their hyper-readiness for battle.

The silence returned.

“H-how did you say your name was pronounced, again, Aurum? I-I’m not sure I got it right in my head just yet,” Cullen admitted sheepishly.

With a smile, Aurum repeated her name slowly, enunciating the syllables of the high tongue, a language no shemlen had the right to know. But she gave the knowledge of her Name freely.

“Elarsulahaja?” Cullen said hesitantly, still stumbling over the tail end of her name.

“Yes, Cullen. Just like that. It means Fade-Singer, in a more poetic way. It is how my People call me in our Clans and amongst ourselves. Our private names.”

Cullen beamed at her, his eyes shining brightly.

“Thank you, Elarsulahaja.”

The name came easier to his tongue this time, and Aurum beamed at him.

When he had to leave, when they had spent enough time pretending that this was just a meeting between Advisor and Inquisitor, he kissed her knuckles and whispered her _Name_ with reverence once again.

The words she wanted to say still got stuck in her throat, and she settled for one last, hungry kiss, burying her hands in Cullen’s curly hair, trying to memorize every last thing about the way it _felt_. The gnawing feeling in her chest was not going away, and when Cullen made his final exit from the tent, his hair ruffled and eyes glittering with unfulfilled want, Aurum nearly, **nearly** called him back.

But he left, and her world dimmed around her.

She went to bed, anxiety nagging at her senses, Anchor spitting veilfire, and words she _should_ have said burning her throat.

She would have time later, Aurum told herself until she fell asleep. There was always more time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For any interested parties, the songs mentioned in the post for the different dances do have specific 'themes' that I thought fit well. Feel free to think of any song you like, but these are the ones I thought fit for each of the underlined bits. The words don't matter as much as the feeling and intent I thought was in the songs. Tadaaa. 
> 
> Doniu & Liber - Najszybszy W Miescie (Keeper’s Song)  
> Skrillex – Ragga Bomb (Bull’s Dalish’s Song)  
> DVBBS – Pyramids (Hashera’s Song)  
> Skrillex – Make It Bun Dem (Yalain’s Song)  
> Jesse Cook – Luna Llena (Dorian’s Song)


	46. The Meeting

The next morning was heralded by stillness. There was a tenseness that hovered in the air, the anticipation of a big battle. It would do no good to discuss potential strategies anymore. The discussions had been had, the troops had been dedicated, and as Aurum laced herself into her armor, she realized that the only real decision left for her was to decide who would be coming into the Temple of Mythal with her.

Morrigan had made it clear that she was coming, regardless what Aurum decided, but Aurum was going to still bring a full contingent of her own Inner Circle. There was nothing that would be even closely considered “overkill”. This was the Temple of her people’s Mother. This was a part of her Clan’s history, her People’s lost time, a relic that should, by right, belong to all of the Elvhenan, but it fell to her in this moment. The entirety of it – the greatness of her history, the trial and tribulations, all of it was now hers to bear.

Aurum tightened the straps on her armor, her brows drawing down into a frown. She knew what could be needed, what she should be doing, but she knew it was going to upset members of her Clan.

She had to do it.

She had to do what was best. And that could not always be what pleased all.

* * *

With her staff in hand, she approached the members of her Inner Circle, each of them prepared to battle, as they always were. Aurum made her decisions rapidly, and had always expected them to be ready when she was ready. They had grown used to it, and now, on the morn of a battle they knew meant so very much to her, they knew to be prepared.

Dorian approached her as she stepped forward, his arms opening wide for a hug that she gladly gave him. He smelled of perfume and vitaar, and Aurum felt her heart break just a little bit more at the realization. He was her First. She had a duty to him as he leader, and a different duty to him as her friend.

“I’m ready to go, dear, so-”

“Dorian, you must stay. I am taking Solas, Sera, and The Iron Bull. We move out now.”

She could see that she had upset no less than three of her companions. Sera looked apoplectic, Dorian looked just as infuriated, Bull looked confused and Solas’ gaze was as inscrutable as it had ever been, but Aurum could not help the chill that ran down her spine.

 _It’s just nerves_ , she told herself as her hands tightened on her staff, and the ancient power that burned in her blood rattled her ribs.

Aurum shook her head. She had to pay attention, she had so much work to do, so many things she had never experienced, so many things that she needed to study and learn so she could pass it along to…someone. Anyone. There wasn’t any time to sit and feel bad about the lack of her vallaslin, or any of the other myriad of ill luck-borne things that had afflicted her since the Conclave.

Dorian approached her as the others went to prepare, his mouth twisting down into a frown. She steeled herself for a long conversation about what it meant to be First and not wanting to risk the entirety of the Clan’s lineage on this one fight. It was bad enough she was going in, it would be worse if Dorian went as well. As much as that pained her.

She opened her mouth to explain, but Dorian held up a hand.

“I am your First, Aurum. I understand, in a way. That doesn’t mean I _like_ this.”

Her ears dipped low. Dorian was her friend, and her First, and her blood brother. She had…there were no real compliments to what their relationship was in any other Clan, and she did not quite understand how she was supposed to navigate this particular decision in light of everything else happening.

Before she could start to explain herself or otherwise try and let him know _why_ she had to do things this way, he gathered her into a tight hug, pressing his forehead into her shoulder and bracing her back with his staff. Aurum froze for a moment, all of her thoughts spiraling down into a single moment of clarity:

“Love you, Dorian,” she mumbled, the Common tongue feeling clunky on her tongue for such a intensely important proclamation. “I don’t want you to get hurt. Be safe.”

He laughed into her neck, pulling her tighter.

“I love you too, Auruta.”

The pet name made her laugh, and she relaxed against him, letting her weight fall against him. Dorian held her up, and Aurum tried to remember what it meant to be strong without him. With everything that had happened since the Conclave, she had had her faith in her Gods and her history and herself tested, and she wasn’t even sure she was confident in her decision for today. But she could take a moment, right now, and just let Dorian hold her.

“Stay safe, Dorghein, I’m going to have to have words with you when I get back,” she said, slowly, pulling away from Dorian, tears spotting in the corner of her eyes.

Dorian tutted, pulling a handkerchief from one his pockets and dabbing the tears away from the corners of her eyes. Aurum leaned into the gentle touches, chasing the contact, desperate for the comfort her friend was offering her in the moment. It was different than what she had sought out with Cullen. Dorian was a friend to her that no one else could ever come close to being, and she was…scared.

The Temple was a sacred place, it was an elvhen historical monument, something that Dorian by all rights could enter as her brother and a member of her people but…it was dangerous. So dangerous. Stupidly dangerous. Deadly dangerous. And she had to protect him.

She stepped away from him, nodding, trying to get herself put back together for long enough to get going.

Dorian took a deep breath, and then a step back away from her. He frowned, and nodding slightly, he clenched his hands at his sides, and bowed.

“Get back, soon, Aurum-Keeper,” Dorian said stiffly, his tongue sliding awkwardly around the elvhen words.

Aurum nodded.

“Keep the Clan safe in my absence, Dorian-First,” came her reply.

There were a thousand unsaid words that hovered between them, but the others who she had collected and commanded to be present were prepared, gathering behind her, readying for the battles that would come for them.

Aurum took a deep breath.

She had work to do.

* * *

The struggle into the temple had been arduous, coming within inches of death and maiming, and now was the time to make a decision – the Red Templars had blasted a hole through the ground and were racing through the underbelly of the temple proper. Iron Bull was urging her to chase them through, following their path, wreaking havoc after there.

But there was a sacred path to walk, and Aurum made the decision without even caring to listen to the argument brewing between Iron Bull and Solas. It was none of their business, and not their choice. They were her Clan, she was their Keeper and the choice lay with her.

Morrigan was ­ _lying_ to her. Lying through her stupid shemlen teeth about what she was here for.

She did not care for the way Morrigan had so blithely misread the plinth to her, the terrible assumption that _somehow_ Aurum knew nothing of her own histories, of her own people, of her own fucking _faith_ , and now she was almost positive that Solas’ offhanded comments throughout the entire time that he had been around her came from the same place.

Two people who did not understand what it meant when her people had been forced to pretend to abandon all their religion to avoid being horrifically murdered, and only barely managed to survive the interim with their history even partially remembered.

Morrigan had _lied_.

So Aurum kept what she knew to herself. She kept her head down and walked the ancient paths, holding the sacred words quietly in her heart so as to not let Morrigan or Solas know what knowledge she had. If they had no respect for what she knew, she wasn’t going to let them know she knew any more than the absolute minimum. This reverence was not for them. Her worship was not for them. Not for them to judge or otherwise offer input on because it wasn’t for them.

It was for her. Not them.

She heard Solas open his mouth to make a suggestion when they approached the shrines for prayer, and immediately moved into the proper meditative steps needed to advance through the Temple. She told them to stay where they were, and carefully, with a reverence she wasn’t certain was not the product of the awe of history that she got to experience now.

The air was still, sweetly scented with floral essences, and Aurum tried to let the overwhelming feeling of awe wash through her and get rid of all of her doubt about everything that has happened so far in her miserable life as the Inquisitor. She tried to feel the peace that pilgrims were meant to feel on the path to the inner sanctum to Mythal’s most sacred place.

But it all rang so very hollow, even as she felt Solas’ eyes burning holes in the back of her head. She could see all the questions Solas was holding back, and did her very best to not give him any sort of indication that she was going to talk or address the questions he may have, just held her head high and moved to the next sacred act.

The further into the Temple they got, the more that feeling that Solas was holding some sort of dark emotion back, the more she did not consult either him or Morrigan to figure out what needed to be done next.

Aurum kept her head high, kept her words tight and controlled, ignored Sera’s eye rolling, Iron Bull’s grumbling, and Solas staring daggers into the back of her head. She had a goddamned job to do and it required her focus. These people were her clan, but…she was…she was…

She was standing in front of the final gates, and Aurum knew that was one door that would change everything. If…if the Temple was completely unchanged, and her people’s long lived histories were correct, if she had done everything correctly when she opened this door –

A contingent of elvhen were standing, in armor unlike anything Aurum had ever seen before, clutching weapons of a finer craft than anything that could possibly exist in all of Thedas. All together, the tips dropped down, leveling at her and her friends.

Aurum stepped forward, the butt of her staff hitting the ground with a booming sound far louder than it had any right to be.

“I am Aurum Tarasyl’an Te’las, blood Lavellan. I have travelled far, and walked the sacred paths of the temple to be here, and I would speak to your Keeper,” she said carefully, enunciating every word as best she could in the common tongue of the elvhen.

She knew that in the years, language would drift, she knew that if these were her people, locked away for generations within the temple, it was likely that any sort of lingual drift that had occurred would make only the very basics of their shared language sensible between them.

Aurum stood tall and proud, in clothes that looked like they would have been used as rags by these people, clutching a weapon as fine as she could craft, knowing that that weapon would have been thrown into a kindling fire for June. But she stood proudly anyway. It was not armor, or clothing, or weapons, or the nakedness of her face without her vallaslin that would make her appear as a proper Keeper to the others.

It was the bloodline, the sacred connection back to the shared past they had.

What came next was yet another unwanted revelation as to how her day was going to go. The Keeper, wearing the vallaslin of Mythal stepped forward and spoke, spoke not of the traditional greeting, but of shame. Shame on Aurum for bringing herself into the Temple, shame for allowing the Red Templars this far, shame and shame and shame again for everything she had done to get them to where they were.

Her fury rose up in her like a thunderstorm, sending magic crackling across her eyes. Solas stepped forward, as did Morrigan, each making impassioned pleas to the leader with an elevated rhythm of speech, speaking over anything Aurum had said with their own words, their own opinions and platitudes.

Aurum’s frown grew deeper, and her mood darkened as Solas and Morrigan and Abelas continued talking over her. Words were put in her mouth and taken back out, only so she could be refitted with more words instead.

She allowed it until she was certain that the three of them were absolutely unaware of anything going on and had rather well convinced themselves that they knew better than her and the knew nothing at all.

Aurum took a deep breath in, steeled her nerves against everything that told her that she could be wrong, her people could have made mistakes, that she was only about to validate the things they were saying about her in this moment. She could not know if she were right, and with as many things as she had been taught being proven wrong (the vallaslin were _slave marks_ , so many things were being said off handed that changed the paradigm of what being elvhen meant to her people) as had been done so far, she had no recourse.

Again, she tapped the butt of her staff against the ground, and the boom that emanated was enough to shake dust from the top of columns.

“<I am Elarsulahaja Tarasyl’an Te’las, blood Lavellan, I will have you speak to me and me alone, not for me or through me, _either_ of you. >,” she said, her voice ringing with the power of ages, and her words were the elevated tongue, the sacred language, the one thing she knew her people could not have lost in the many long years since _they_ were like these elvhen Sentinels.

Solas gaped open-mouthed at her, and Abelas blinked.

“<You speak-?>” Abelas started and Aurum snarled.

“<Do you have such little faith in your own people, despite the centuries of your own sleep, and your lack of knowledge, that we would not do what we could to retain what we knew in our years of slavery – of oppression – of murder? You have such little imagination, such a small ability to envision what your people are capable of. Because. We. Are. Your. People!>”

Her emotions were running rampant, and despite the constrictions of the high language, she was intent upon making her opinions known.

“<I am Elarsulahaja Tarasyl’an Te’las, Inquisitor, and Keeper. My Clan needs to protect your Well, we seek to keep a great evil from gaining access into the fade-paths, we need nothing from you – we only want to do what is best for _our_ people. Please, let us pass. >”

Abelas looked properly taken aback, regarding Aurum with an even gaze that she did not shy away from. This was what she wanted, this was everything she had been trained for, and in the moment it did not matter that Abelas was a elvhen from the time when the elvhen were their own people, that he disregarded her knowledge and strengths for all he saw was a elf who the life and vitality had bled from in the long time since Arlathan.

He was still her people.

And she needed to impress upon him that what was coming next would be horrifying, and that she could stop it, or at the very least deflect the power for long enough to deny Corypheus what he was looking for.

 She stared up at him, eyes flashing blue and purple, back straight, jaw set. She would not be disregarded, she would not be turned away. This was her birthright as much as it was his and she was not going to let it be taken from her for something as simple as the drag of time on her bloodline.

She was Aurum.

She was Elarsulahaja.

She was Blood Lavellan.

And this Temple was as much hers as it was any of the People’s.

 

* * *

* * *

[If you like this, feel free to buy me a Ko-Fi!](https://ko-fi.com/darkarashi)


	47. The Well

Abelas gave a command, curt and demanding to one of the other Elvhen who stood with him. They would have a guide through the Temple, shortcutting much of the trials that still existed to challenge those who had entered the Temple without the proper intentions.

 The sounds of the other Elvhen locked in battle with the red templars echoed through the halls. Aurum knew better than to ask to help the others. The Sentinels were prideful, and even without the rocky introduction  she had had with them, she knew her help would not be wanted, needed, or even asked for.

It was a struggle not to be insulted, not to lose her temper, not to rage in fury at the great indignity she had had to stomach in order to broker a peace.

She was _Elvhen_.

She was of the _People_.

This was _her place_ as much as it belonged to anyone else, and to have to be talked over by Morrigan, by Solas, by people who had lied to her face, made _fury_ bloom in her chest unlike anything she had ever felt.

Solas drew up next to her as they walked, and his mouth opened, clearly intending to ask her any number of questions. Aurum held up a hand to stop him before he even started.

“No. You lied to me. Constantly. Consciously. I do not care if you think I am interesting now, Solas. I am _furious_ with you. Keep your lying tongue still.”

He looked taken aback at that.

“Aurum, please you must understand-”

 _“No_ , Solas, _you_ need to understand. I am Dalish. We are the _last_ of the Elvhen. Never again will we submit, not even to those who would lie to us. You were _wrong_.”

That was the end of the conversation. Solas took her admonishment for what it was, and, frowning, dropped back towards the back of the group with Morrigan, who was staring at the back of Aurum’s head, and saying nothing.

“And in case you were wondering, Morrigan, I _can_ read the Old Tongue as well. You lied. For what reason you thought that was any good you _lied_ to me about _my. Own. People._ ”

Aurum did not even look over her shoulder to talk to Morrigan. Sera and Bull both said nothing, following behind and casting furtive glances between each other. This was…well they had certainly expected fucky things, what with the elves and the temple and whatnot, but this was a little beyond the pale. Even for the fucky things they had already experienced, this was pretty fucky.

“Boss are you…alright?” Bull asked as they duck under another portcullis, into the open air.

“No. Fucking _Creators_ , I am not alright. I’m not. I haven’t been for a long, **_long_** time,” Aurum said bitterly.

Her shoulders rolled forward, and she was momentarily overcome with the weight of everything she had done, everything she had suffered through, and everything that was still promised to her. The pain, the traumas, the knowledge and the desperation. All of it. It wore on her, dragging on every last part of her body.

She was so _tired_.

So when she heard Samson’s voice rise up, saw a contingent of red templars closing in on them, there was an extra heartbeat of time before she called for battle positions.

Morrigan bolted, racing for the Well, leaving the group without a third mage. Aurum did not even try and stop her, staring straight ahead at Samson.

Cullen had asked her, just the once, to show the man some sort of small mercy, not because of who he was now, but because of who he had once been. In kinder times, Aurum would have considered it. She could have tried so many other things, a way to get out of this fight, to grant clemency.

But she was done.

Burned out.

She did not even give Samson a chance to finish his initial taunt before she was flinging magic at his face. He barely brought his shield up in time to send her magic arcing wide around him. She did not give him, or his allies, any chance to try and talk. She was done talking. She wanted to hurt him, she wanted this to be done.

Solas, Bull, and Sera took up positions and began the fight. Bull rushed one of the templars, swinging his greathammer at the head of one of them. Sera had arrows already flying through the air, laying down cover for her group to keep the templars away from the two mages in the party.

Aurum fought like a woman possessed by a rage unmatched. She stabbed with the blade of her staff, slicing a templar’s throat when he got too close to her, her lips pulled back in a savage snarl. Magic sparked in the air around her, pouring off of her skin in sheets.

It was rare to ever see or feel a mage that was so completely out of control as Aurum was in that moment.

Her moves were brutal and the magic she flung at Samson, and only ever Samson staggered him with every blow.

This was not Haven.

This was not Adamant.

The time had passed for that. She was not going to hold herself back. She was standing in the temple of Her People, and was facing down those who would desecrate the last bit of what culture and history the Elvhen could claim. It did not even matter to her that Abelas did not even want to _claim_ her, she was the last of the Elvhen.

She was the last of the Elvhen. This was her place. Her Temple.

Samson was _not invited_. And not welcome.

He would pay for his transgression into _her_ place.

She pulled fire out of the air in great sheets of heat and fury. Samson stumbled away from her, lifting an arm and his shield up in front of his face to defend himself from the burning rage.

Frost cracked the ground under their feet, forming a huge snowflake on the ground. The sound it made was like stone shattering, and the ground buckled. One of the templars fell to the ground, and Bull finished him off quickly, pulverizing the man’s head with a brutal downward swing.

The sickening, wet crunch the sound of the man’s head popping did not even garner an iota of attention from anyone in the fight. This was a grudge match.

Sera, Bull and Solas fought their own battles, holding off the rest of the Red Templars as the Inquisitor and Corypheus’ Lieutenant settled their differences.

Their differences, of course, being that the Lieutenant wanted her fucking dead, and she wanted the world not to die in horrific, Blight-related circumstances. There really was no way to settle the score other than with a fight to the death.

His armor gave way before her magic did, and Aurum pressed her every advantage. She was not letting him walk away from this.

The world _sang_ to her, glorious hymns of the Fade, and she sang destruction back. It was the only song fitting what she wanted, and Destruction patterned itself in her every step. Her sight faltered, her vision going hazy around the edges as she moved and worked in one of the most sacred of all places of Thedas. Her magic felt unlike anything it had ever done so before, but there was no time to question it.

Samson stood before her, battered and wounded, but still, infuriatingly, standing.

The next breath she took seared her lungs. There was no ash or fire in it, but she had gone too long without breathing. It was easy to do when you were lost in the Song. She blinked only once, and saw Samson still standing.

The Song _roared_ its hatred of him, its demands that he be defeated, brought lo, removed in any way necessary because he was an **_abomination_** in this sacred place. Aurum could not make sense of it, and she did not want to. She was a slave to the Song, and the Song demanded she kill the man in front of her. No matter how much it took of her.

And much was going to be taken of her.

Her soul was being run ragged. She spun her staff in a tight circle around her, knocking Samson’s shield wide, leaving him open for a volley from Ser. Arrows slammed into Samson’s neck and chest, and he reeled backwards.

Aurum pressed the advantage, whipping her staff around, slicing across his face with the blade and then sending frost across his feet, holding him in place. She heard a roar from behind her and dropped to her stomach, just as Bull’s warhammer sang through the air and slammed into Samson’s chest piece, collapsing it and the red lyrium spire that had been growing out of his chest.

Samson grunted and dropped to his knees, clutching at the ruined armor piece and shaking. He grunted and fell to the ground, clutching at ruined armor.

She stood over him, looking down at his prone form.

He made to swing his sword, and Aurum raised her stave high, slamming it down into the ground, tip-first, through his wrist. Samson screamed, his fingers going nerveless all at once. Aurum twisted the stave back and forth, a snarl painting its way across her face. His screams could not soothe the vindictive rage that had built up in her chest. It was not until his screams reached a fever pitch and his wrist was a mangled mess that she finally pulled the blade of her stave from his wrist.

Samson did nothing so undignified as sob as his wrist bled horrifying amounts of blood all over the ground, and Aurum did nothing so kind as to even try to stop the bleeding.

The both of them regarded each other, breathing heavily and beattle-worn.

Aurum was exhausted, she had used so much of herself to get through this fight, and there was hardly anything left in reserve to use.

But it did not matter. Samson was defeated.

She stood over him, stave lifted for a rightful killing blow. Samson just stared at her, his gaze unflinching, even in this defeat.

“Kill me, _mage_ ,” he snapped at her, lifting his chin so she could slam her blade home into his throat.

She grit her teeth, and a rage and fury that spread through eons flushed through her. Aurum wanted him _dead_. More than she had wanted many things dead before in her entire life. She had hated and killed and brutalized before – her time has Inquisitor had been far from gentle. She knew the depth and breadth of those things that infuriated her.

This moment was unlike any of those others.

This was a battlefield, a proper one. If she wanted to kill Samson here no one would stop her. It was well within her right to kill him now. No one would blame her.

No one would castigate her.

She was _right_ to kill him in this moment, and everything in her wanted to. She wanted to kill him.

She wanted to _murder_ him.

The deep breath she took hurt with how much it contrasted her desires. She wanted nothing more than to murder. Rage. Kill. Destroy. He was everything wrong with the world as it was. Killing him would solve nothing, but it would soothe her.

Aurum stepped down, pulling her stave away from his throat. It hurt something in her soul to allow Samson to live, but she was supposed to be better than that. These shemlen had put her in charge. She was Keeper, even if it was a broken, fractured clan of elvhen, human, qunari and dwarves.

She was supposedly better than this. She had to believe that. Aurum had to believe that this whole thing was more than a random twist of fate, because if she did not…if this was all random. It still did not matter. She was expected to be so much better than everyone else. So much better.

“The Inquisitor will try you for your crimes, Samson. You will have justice.”

Samson scoffed.

“Oh yes, the justice of the _Inquisitor_ , how fitting. Certainly I will receive a fair trial from the pretender. You have no right to judge me. None. You have no power, everything you have built is built on _lies_ and you have no right to do any of this.”

Aurum snarled, and turned on Samson. Muscles stood out all down her shoulders and arms as she stabbed down with the blade of her stave.

Samson tensed, and from behind her, Solas shouted.

The blade of her stave was buried a good five inches into the dirt next to Samson’s neck. A thin line had opened up, barely enough to even bleed at all, but he bled regardless.

His red eyes stared up at her, but he did not move, or speak to her. Aurum leaned heavily on her stave, staring down at him with her face contorted into a mask of fury. She wanted nothing more than to rip the blade out of the ground and stab it into his throat. For the indignity, for everything, for all the things that he had done and all of what had come to pass.

Chest heaving, Aurum pulled the blade out of the ground and turned away from Samson.

“Bull, get his armor off him and tie him down. Throw a rock on him, keep him down. The rest of the Inquisition can come by and take him back to Skyhold. We’ve wasted enough time with this monster. Gag him while you’re at it.”

The Iron Bull did not say anything to her, he just went to work doing as she asked. Aurum had a death grip on her stave as she stared towards the Well.

It was the finality. That was it. There was only so much further that she could go after this.

Corypheus had already lost his lieutenant. She was going to take his only other way into the Fade from him. She was going to stop him here and now. And then. Then she would be done.

She took a deep breath.

Once the sounds of Bull restraining Samson quieted, and Aurum felt the slightest bit more under control, she started to relax. Samson was removed from the equation. There was one less monster lurking in her shadows. She could do this.

Aurum closed her eyes, letting the magic of the Temple flow through her. She had fought and struggled so long for so little that she could let herself stand where she was and just, for a moment, pretend none of it existed.

None of the pain or terror or exhaustion.

No, just for a moment, it was Aurum alone in the entire Temple. An Elvhen woman, a paragon of her kind. Perhaps the last of her kind, perhaps not even one of her kind, as Abelas said to her. Maybe she did not belong here, maybe she did.

Regardless.

She soothed herself with the scent of embrium, royal elfroot, and some plants that she had only ever heard described in legends and by passing stories around the fires at the Arlathven. Aurum burned the memory into her mind, ignoring all of the extraneous drama and hurt and pain that dogged her. The memory was untainted by the reason she was there.

She stood where her ancestors had.

She breathed the air they had.

She walked the paths they had.

This was her place of worship as much as it had been theirs. She read the same words they had written for the travelers, she knew some of what they had known, thanks to an unbroken line of mages who defended the sacred knowledge and passed it on.

She did not stand here on her own merit, but on the backs of every mage, hunter, and halla-herder that had come before her. They had, all of them, struggled and fought with the world around them, a world that did not care, a world that wanted them all dead. And Aurum now stood where they had _told_ her she would.

In the centuries since Arlathan, to have so much of the knowledge maintained, to have what is truly the core of their own past lives maintained…Aurum had never felt more proud to be elvhen.

No matter what in her had been broken or shaken or made to doubt, she was _elvhen_ , and that still meant something.  This was her Temple. This could be her God’s place. This was hallowed grounds, regardless of whether or not she could bring herself to believe in the Gods.

Aurum centered herself, let her tension flow out of her.

She opened her eyes.

“Let’s move on. Leave Samson here, we will come for him later. The Well needs to be tended to.”

And without looking back, she struck onwards.

If she looked back, she would be lost. Her heart could only take so much breaking, and as long as she could resolve this, as long as she could finish this last gamut. She was almost done.

If she could just hold on for a little bit longer…she could have her rest.

No one spoke to her as she made the final ascent to the Well. The stairs up were well-worn. Smooth beneath her feet, the stones were warm, and hummed with a sort of magic that was both ancient and familiar.

It sang to her in whispered tongues, the magic did, humming mysteries against her flesh and sidling power up against her bones.

She ached at it all.

So much had been taken from her people. This…it was hard not to walk up the overgrown steps towards the Well of Sorrows and wonder what it could have been if her People had not been brutally torn from their legacy all those centuries ago.

What would this Temple have been, if the Elvhen had never been forced to flee every semblance of home, and permanence?

Her heart hurt and tears pricked the corner of her eye. Two people she had considered friends – people she had trusted, even a little bit – and they had lied to her face. Betrayed that trust, assumed her stupid on the matters of those things most important to her People.

Because they did not care.

Not really.

For a certainty, she concluded as she reached the last step, and saw Morrigan standing, stooped in hushed conversation with Abelas, this should have gone differently.  

But, like so much else in her life, it had not gone “differently”. It had unwound as it had unwound, and that meant she was standing at the Well of Sorrows, missing so much of her history and the history of her People being stripped from them. That still hurt her.

Abelas looked at her like she was a stranger. Aurum supposed she was a stranger to him. They had nothing related, no shared memories, except for histories that were more myth to her than actual memory.

Their ears were pointed and sloped the same way, their eyes caught the light and reflected the memory of long-distant stars the same way, but…

Aurum shook her head. There was no use in thinking about it any longer than she had done already.

Behind the two of them was another eluvian, and her stomach sank at the sight. The Well, and an Eluvian, right here. For Corypheus to take if they failed. Regardless of whether or not Corypheus could open _this_ eluvian, guarded as jealously as it was by the Sentinels of the Temple, she did not want him any closer to it than he was already. It was a dangerous way into the Fade, and as she had already _been_ in the Fade, she did not want Corypheus in there.

They could not fail.

“I take it the two of you have made some sort of decision without me, and will enact it regardless of what I say, or think of the issue,” she said acerbically, purposefully using the High Elvhen.

Deshanna had always taught her it was sacred and only to be used in the most serious of circumstance. But Deshanna had been taken from her, like so many other things had been.

Abelas frowned at her, pulling himself up to his full height. He was taller than her, more leanly built, and while there were clear near familial relationship between them, he was just…something more than she was. Centuries separated them from whatever commonality they could have shared. She may be elvhen, like he was, but she was not elvhen like _he_ was.

“There are better uses of our language than that,” he said in heavily accented Common, turning his gaze directly to her.

“Oh, I am certain there are, though I would certainly be surprised if you were willing to speak of them to me.”

Abelas looked properly shocked at that, and after taking a look at the rest of her team, he dragged his eyes back to her.

“You found a battle, despite my scouts, I see.”

She flashed fang too long for her mouth at him in a grin that was equal parts wolf and elvhen.

“I had business with a monster. Certainly you could understand such necessities.”

“You wear Fen’harel’s skin, do you, da’fen?”

A growl rattled out of her, shaking her ribs with its intensity. Abelas did not flinch even for a moment, only watched her placidly.

“Betimes,” she snapped.

“You are not like the others.”

“You are not the first to say that to me. You won’t be the last.”

Abelas quirked and eyebrow at her and, surprisingly, inclined his head to her in a short bow. She did not react any further, just stood in place, a hand on her stave. Her emotions were still raging in her chest, but Abelas’ sudden heel turn in his attitude towards her had calmed at least the outward most expressions of her fury.

“I see I may have…misunderstood you, Elarsulahaja. But I cannot allow you to take the power of the Well for yourself.”

She frowned.

“Why. Is Morrigan to take it, then? What purpose is there for her to take a piece of our history?”

Abelas looked away from her, shooting Morrigan an utterly unreadable look out of the corner of his eye. Aurum followed his gaze, carefully looking over his shoulder towards the Witch of the Wilds.

Morrigan had come into her life like most everything else had – all at once, and without any sort of preamble.

And now, the Witch of the Wilds looked at her, her golden eyes inscrutable. Morrigan held her gaze and did not offer any explanations. Aurum was certain that even if she asked for help from Morrigan, the Witch would only ever offer what she thought would be most useful to _her_. Regardless of what Aurum needed, Morrigan would do what was best for _her_.

Were she an elf as Aurum was, Aurum would be understanding and, perhaps not so aggressive in her actions, but Morrigan was a shemlen, and that changed _everything_.

“Da’fen, please. Please understand,” Abelas said, a note of desperation creeping into his voice. “I would not suggest this unless I thought it necessary.”

“Explain then, _tell_ me what it is that needs Morrigan and not one of _our_ People to take from the Well, Abelas.”

He looked away from her, and did not respond. Aurum scoffed, and shook her head. This whole endeavor was breaking her heart. Abelas should have been someone astonishing to her, something that changed the entire paradigm of the Dalish for the better.

She should have come before the Sentinels and been able to utterly change the entirety of the Dalish way of life.

She should have _seen_ what remained of her culture, of her People, should have been able to learn, should have returned to the next Arlathven with knowledge and power and pieces of their history put back together. It should have been something amazing. It would have changed the path of her People for every conceivable potential future.

They could have reclaimed so much again if they had only had what Abelas knew. If he had offered the knowledge of the Sentinels. If, if, if, if fucking _if_.

So much had been taken, and Abelas did not seem at all interested in sharing whatever knowledge he had. Secrets of their past, of things the Dalish had forgotten and yearned to remember, Abelas held them all in his hands and he was not willing to share.

This was not fair. None of this was fair.

But Aurum swallowed her words down and just stared at Abelas. There were questions that burned her tongue, and she had to just swallow the embers down. Abelas was not going to give her any further information. He had said more than he had wanted to already. He had made his decision, and even in remaking it a tiniest bit was not going to make it so that she could truly understand him.

He held himself apart from her.

“Sera. I want your opinion on this. Do I let Morrigan take the Well?” Aurum asked, turning to the elf she knew who cared nothing for anything about the People or her own elvhen blood.

Sera looked shocked to be addressed, especially since she had been spending her entire time in the Temple complaining about any number of Elvhen things. To be asked about something like _this_ when it was so clearly important had her looking at Aurum warily.

They were friends, but there had always been a gap in between them when it came to the history of the Elvhen and their legacy. They were at odds there. Sera did not care, and Aurum, perhaps, cared too much about it.

“Let the Witchy take it. You don’t know wot it’ll do, yea? What if’n it just…melts your brain! You don’t know wot it’ll do. Let her take the wotsit.”

Aurum sighed.

She did not know what to do. Sera had a point. What she could do to understand the Well if the information she had was incomplete. And without Morrigan and Abelas offering whatever else they knew, she was working with incomplete information. That could only spell bad things for her. Or it could be the key to fully understanding what was lost.

But she could not know.

She could not learn, or find the answers. Time was running out. She did not have the months she needed to consider the ramifications of any potential action she took. Like so often before, she was being forced to make a decision without being able to have all the answers she wanted.

“Bull?”

He grunted, tilting his head to the side, and frowning as he looked between the Well and Morrigan.

“It’s power. I don’t trust her. Take it for yourself.”

“Practical, Bull,” Aurum said softly, her own eyes dropping to the Well.

The air around them practically hummed with magic. She could nearly cut the air with her stave with how thick the magic felt. The Well was Magic and Magic again, and so much of it roared to her senses that it was nearly impossible to listen to anything else.

“Morrigan, what is it that you think the Well will do for you?” she asked carefully, not looking to the Witch of the Wilds, but rather staring even deeper into the depths of the Well.

“Unlock the secret to Corypheus’ power, give us a way to kill him, and end this. Tis a bad situation you are in but you _must_ trust me, I need what is in that Well in order to finish this, and what is more, I need what is in the Well to open the eluvian itself.”

“If nothing else, you at least sound sincere, Morrigan.”

Morrigan only offered her a tight grin.

They were both on edge. Morrigan wanted what was in the Well. Aurum could not tell if it was a good idea for Morrigan to have what was in the Well, or if she was better suited to take it instead. Because no one would tell her what was in the Well.

“Lethallin-”

“Absolutely _not_ , Solas. You do not speak on this matter. Not after everything else you’ve done. I don’t want to hear you speak at all, especially not to hear you say _lethallin_. You called me seth’lin, and you _believed_ that to be true. It was not and I  care not for your words now,” Aurum snapped, not even turning to look at Solas.

Blessedly, he did not try and speak again. She heard him shift his weight from one foot to the other, and the only indication she gave was a fast twitch of her ears. Her blood burned in her for a moment, rage uncurling in her chest at the _lies_ he had told and the _presumptions_ he had made about her and what she knew. How _dare_ he?

Aurum tried to take a deep breath, tried to find a way to see through what her every nerve ending was _screaming_ at her, but before she could even try and figure out what to do, there was an ungodly screech.

She spun on a heel, her magic coming up in a defensive barrier spell over the group to protect them from whatever it was that was about to happen.

Aurum _felt_ the Well react, a roiling surge of power that reached for her as she reached for the Fade. Her magic was ripped out of her control, and it took every last bit of training she had to even maintain focus without letting the spell go wild.

Her barrier bloomed into something **more** , expanding out into a huge bubble of power that covered the entire group and the Well itself. Debris rattled down from the ancient spires of stone that formed the Temple, crashing into the barrier before being thrown to the side.

Aurum held the barrier for as long as she could, until the Temple stopped shaking and some of the dust cleared.

Corypheus was…hovering in the distance, clearly having recovered from the first initial burst of power that had forced him to possess one of the altered Grey Wardens he still had in his retinue. He saw them. She saw him.

And the full contingent of Red Templars behind him.

“Morrigan, Well, **_NOW_**!” Aurum shouted over her shoulder, not for a moment letting up the focus on her barrier.

She planted the blade of her stave in the ground, and concentrated. The Well’s Song screamed at her, pulling at the careful magic she crafted. Focus was hard, and it was made even harder by the pressing _need_ in her chest to protect her friends.

If they all got back to Skyhold, they could send word to the Inquisition’s forces to fall back to Skyhold as they planned their next attack to defeat Corypheus. But this was not a venue conducive to that sort of fight. He still had Grey Wardens, he was, for the moment, at least, functionally immortal.

The barrier deepened in color, glowing violet as she poured more and more of her magic into it, trying to buy time as Corypheus closed in on them. Aurum could feel the magic behind her reacting to something, and assumed that it meant that Morrigan was consuming the Well or being consumed by it or whatever it was that was supposed to happen with the Well was happening.

The last time she had been anywhere near him had been Haven, but this was not Haven.

She grit her teeth against panic and painful memories.

She had done the impossible, and everything else she could to protect the Inquisition that night. Today was not going to be the day that she failed them.

Behind her, she heard the hum of the eluvian’s opening, and felt _that_ pull on her magic as well, the siren’s call of the Fade behind her, beckoning her with safety.

She was almost done, almost almost done, she just had to hold on a little bit longer, stall a little bit more, and then they could all escape through the eluvian. Leaving the entirety of the army that depended on her for protection and leadership behind. Could she do that?

Aurum took a deep breath.

The Song of the Well began to fade away, and in it, she could hear Morrigan’s own magic start wailing. There was no time to check and see if Morrigan was truly _fine_ in that moment. Aurum turned her head to see Morrigan staggering up out of the Well, startlingly dry.

Solas reached for Morrigan, stabilizing her and talking quickly under his breath. She could not take the time to try and understand what was being said, even if it was in elvhen.

She had a decision to make.

Corypheus was closing in, and the eluvian was open, a way into the Fade as much as the Well itself was. Or could be.

Aurum took a deep breath.

Her barrier could not hold without her.

A loud _crack_ rent the air as the eluvian behind Solas opened, but she knew it was not Solas who had done it. Aurum felt the same flush of energy she had felt in Skyhold when Morrigan had opened the eluvian to the crossroads. The way was open.

“Go, go, go, go! Morrigan knows the crossroads back to Skyhold, go, follow her!” Aurum shouted, her voice raising above the onrushing tide of Red Templars, and Corypheus himself.

Her barrier solidified into a magic unlike any she had ever done in her life, and she dug her heels in to try and brace herself as the magic spun out of her control.

“ _Boss?!_ ” Bull shouted, his voice touched by a nearly unheard of amount of worry.

“I am _right_ behind you, Bull, go, just go!” she screamed, bracing herself against her stave.

The ironwood under her hands was hot, and when she pressed her shoulder against it (her left shoulder, it was instinctive, she couldn’t help it), she _felt_ veilfire rip across her flesh. Not true flames, and she _knew_ that. But she closed her eyes against the green fires that burst from her stave, and the answering ones that burst from the Anchor in her hand.

She felt the wood splitting under her palms, and she knew she was about to be without her weapon. Even if she did not need her weapon to do battle, she knew what was about to happen was going to _hurt_.

“Boss, now, we’re all ready!” Bull shouted from behind her.

Corypheus was closing in, and her barrier could only stand for a few moments without her tending the stave. The stave was only a foci, but it was where her barrier was attached to. If she left it, the barrier would collapse.

She turned from the stave, and bolted for the eluvian. Solas was already through, as was Morrigan – she could see them through the shimmering reflection of the eluvian. Bull was halfway through the eluvian, and when he saw her coming close, he stepped through. Sera was on his heels, she watched them all pass through to safety.

Aurum brought her hands up, wreathed in power, and looked at her friends, her companions…and shattered the mirror of the eluvian, channeling all of the pent-up energy of the barrier made of magic beyond her capability through her hands and into the mirror.

It shattered, and an explosion of power ripped through the area.

She felt glass and magic rip through her skin, and the Fade tore at her consciousness. Aurum staggered, let the sounds of chaos from behind her wash over her. She could hear Corypheus’ screaming, and the screams of the Red Templars with him.

The last thought of her conscious mind was that it was at least good that if she was going to die, they were coming with her.

The sounds grey to an overwhelming crescendo, then cut out.

And the world went black.


	48. The Stand

 Aurum came to when she felt the ground beneath her moving. Her senses were groggy and she was only dimly aware of the stone scraping her shoulder. When she struggled, whoever was dragging her (by the heel of her right foot) stopped and turned.

“Cor, Quizzy, you’re awake?”

“Sera?” Aurum mumbled, her tongue thick in her mouth.

She blinked, trying to clear her eyes and focus on something, anything at all. She could not hear much, though she definitely _felt_ it went Sera dropped to her knees on Aurum’s left and hastily pressed her hands to Aurum’s left shoulder.

“Everything went sideways, I grabbed you and just ran, it’s fucking _filth_ with Red Templars right now. Coryshits fucked right off when you destroyed the fancy fuckin’ mirror an’ an’ then I just grabbed ye’ and now we’re getting’ outta here, yea?”

Aurum shook her head and sat up. The air around them was thick with dust and debris. Blinking grit out of her field of view, Aurum felt tears streak down her face as her eyes desperately tried to clear the dirt out. Everything _hurt_ , and it was near impossible to breathe, let alone get to her feet.

But she had to.

“Sera, how? I saw you. You were in the Mirror. I saw…I closed it on you. I was…you were safe…”

Her chest ached with every breath she took. Some part of her ribs was broken. There was maybe even more damage than that, but she did not have the time to try and think about such things. Sera needed…she needed to be protected. This was a bad place. A dangerous one.

She staggered to her feet. Her stave was gone, and there was a line of ironwood splinters digging into her skin, from her left wrist, all the way up her arm, and across her neck. That stung something fierce, and when she moved her arm, it burned.

But she had work to do. So much work.

“I…” Sera went uncommonly quiet. “I needed to not be there, so I’m here now, okay?”

Aurum shook her head.

“I have so many questions but-” from behind the two of them, there was a roar. “We should _go_. We can get out of the Temple, we can talk later, but we need to go.”

Aurum grunted as she started to walk away from the sounds, deeper into the Temple. She did not know the layout of the Temple, but they could work around whatever remnants of Corypheus’ army were still in the Temple. The two of them were in no shape to get in any sort of fight.

Sera’s quiver was almost empty, and Aurum had almost no magical force left in her. She was exhausted. If she had her way in this moment, she would just curl up behind a broken statue and sleep for a week.

“You look like shit, yenno.”

“Thanks. Feel it.”

Sera snorted, laughing at the deprecating joke. Aurum shook her head, trying to clear whatever fuzziness was lingering in her head. There was a lot. She was so tired. So, so very tired.

She caught herself on a pillar, holding herself upright, and shaking her head. It hurt. It hurt so much. She felt her back spasm and grunted.

“Aurum, we have to go, come on.”

Sera pulled Aurum back to her feet and slung one of Aurum’s arms over her shoulder. Aurum was too tired to even try and argue, and her feet barely managing to catch her weight and help Sera move her along. Aurum couldn’t catch her breath, couldn’t get her eyes to focus. Everything hurt, and the song of the Temple roared in her ears.

She had so much to do still, but she was…

“Why didn’t you go through the door mirror with us? You had time,” Sera said as she dragged Aurum along.

The archer was more than strong enough to carry Aurum along, but she still had questions, clearly, and was intent on having them answered. Aurum shook her head.

“No. Didn’t trust…Morrigan. She didn’t know what she had done. The Well. I couldn’t…she didn’t know for sure. No one did. I had to make sure. I had to make sure that nothing bad happened. Stop Corypheus. It was. I had to protect you all.”

She felt a brief flash of pain as one of her bare feet cracked against stone. She felt her skin break, and blood slicked her foot. It hurt. She hissed, trying to pull her leg up to get her foot out of range of whatever it was that hurt her.

Sera held her steady, catching Aurum’s weight easily and balancing the both of them. Aurum reeled regardless, her sense of balance just completely gone. She wanted to sleep. She wanted a lot of things. She wanted to stop hurting. She did not want to take the time to recover. She just wanted to be done and not deal with this. But Sera had her held tight and kept her moving. Aurum tried to remember how to be the Inquisitor and stoic and calm and unassuming. She just wanted to be done.

“Come on, come on, Quizzy, keep up, keep up, they’re behind us.”

The words, usually more than enough to motivate her into moving, doing, acting, fighting, barely even roused the slightest bit of extra movement from her. She was just…so tired. Of everything.

There was only a whistle from behind them as warning before three arrows whipped out of the air behind them. Two lodged themselves in the back of her shoulder, staggering her and forcing Sera to drop Aurum so she could dart out of the way.

The archer behind them already had another arrow readied, and let it fly. Sera shouted and loosed an arrow of her own, knocking the opposing arrow out of the sky. Aurum shook her head and slowly sat up. She had to blink stars and forgotten constellations out of her eyes before she could even see the battlefield.

Seven red templars, one of whom was a hulking archer, were behind them. The two of them were in dire straits, and in no way prepared for any sort of fight. Especially a fight with seven red templars. _Especially_ when they were trying to escape.

Aurum briefly thought about trying to form some sort of magical attack, and brought her power up to bear, but unbearable _pain_ lanced through her head. With a groan she reached up to press a palm to her forehead, but Sera grabbed her arm and hefted her to her feet.

“We gotta go!” Sera shouted, turning away from the fight and bolting, dragging Aurum along behind her.

Aurum staggered along after Sera, trying to shake away afterimages of the Temple-as-it-was from her eyes. The veil between the Fade and reality was perilously thin and it dragged at her terribly. Everything in her hurt. Breathing hurt. Thinking hurt. Standing hurt. It all hurt.

Living _hurt_.

But she stumbled after Sera, trusting her friend to see her through this to safety. Arrows whistled past the both of them, with Sera occasionally yanking her one way or another, out of the path of another arrow.

Aurum tried to keep pace, but it was abundantly clear that Aurum could just not keep up with Sera. Sera had to practically drag her to keep her moving even a little bit close to as fast as they needed to go. The Red Templars were, thankfully, held back by virtue of the combined agility of two separate elves, even one as grievously injured as Aurum was.

Sera and Aurum could just move faster than the Templars could, and that was the only thing that was keeping them even a little bit out of danger’s path. The archer was the only one that was causing them grief, with arrows flitting by the two of them intermittently, whenever he felt like he had a clear shot on them.

Which was more often than either of them would have preferred, honestly.

The two of them looped a long path through the Temple, avoiding as much of the danger in there as possible. It would have to be obvious where they were trying to go, but thanks to Sera’s intuitive selection of their escape route, it was impossible for their pursuers to get ahead of them and cut them off.

The protection their move offered them was minimal at best, and the Templars were dogging their steps.

Aurum gasped for air, clutching Sera’s arm for balance, completely lost. She was in so much pain that she couldn’t even try to direct herself. She followed behind Sera, trusting her friend to guide her. She trusted Sera to keep her safe. Sera was impossible. Not frustrating, just that Sera did impossible things without thinking about it. Aurum could not think about what was happening or where they were, she just trusted Sera.

She had to.

“Sera…”Aurum whispered, her voice rasping and harsh.

Her friend didn’t seem to hear her, intent upon getting them to the door that led out to the rest of the Temple, the same door that they had passed through on their way in. The hole the Templars had used to bypass all of the meditative paths that the Elvhen had once put in place was in front of them, but there was more than a slim chance that it was still crawling with Templars as well.

The door in front of them, massive and imposing, where it had once been sealed shut, it was now sagging open. To the side of it, there were collapsed pillars, and a bridge that had been blown to pieces, by the Templars, by the Sentinels, by Corypheus himself, it didn’t matter. There was no way across the chasm presented to them.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, there’s got to be another way across, come on, come on, we have to go around.”

“… _Sera_ ,” Aurum tried again, shaking her head and pulling away from her friend. “Sera, listen.”

Her voice was barely above a whisper. It burned her throat to even try to speak. But everything hurt her and she had to plant her feet and pull her arm out of Sera’s grasp to get Sera to pay attention.

“I’m holding you back. You have to go. I can get the bridge up for you. I can get you across and keep them from getting to you. If you run, you’ll get through the Temple faster than if you’re dragging me.”

“No! No, we can’t, not like tha-”

“ _Listen_ , Sera. Please. Please, you have to go. I can, I have…” Aurum reached into her hip pouch and fumbled for something.

An arrow whistled past her ear, clipping it. The blood, the pain, everything else, it all blended together, and Aurum barely felt the pain of losing yet another piece of her ear, and just focused on Sera. Her friend, Sera. Her clansmember, Sera. She had promised, had promised had promised to protect her clan. At any cost.

She pulled three vials of lyrium out of her bag and showed them to Sera.

“I can hold them off. I can stall them. If you move fast, if you go and get reinforcements, I can back you up. I can…Sera you can get out of here. I promise I can hold them off. Long enough to get reinforcements.”

“You’re lying, Aurum. You don’t have any intent of-”

The Anchor in her hand spat green fire and she reached out with her hand. Veilfire raced up her arm, and where the splinters of her staff had dug into her flesh, she felt fire _burning_ in her skin. She grit her teeth, and let the power of the Anchor flash through her.

The bridge, in shattered stone pieces groaned and cracked, and slowly, laboriously, lifted back into the air. The bridge reformed, wreathed in green light, and Aurum turned to Sera.

“I’ll hold it up until you get across. Then I’ll drop it, and hold the line as long as I can.”

With her free hand, she pulled the stopper out of one of the vials of lyrium and drank it down. Magic, sickly and cloying, flushed through her body.

Aurum had always hated the taste of lyrium. Compared to the magic that roared through her body on its own, lyrium always tasted…bad. Too sweet, too overpowering, too much, and it cleaved to the roof of her mouth in a way that made her ache for wine or _something_ to clear the taste out of her mouth.

Sera huffed, looked over her shoulder to where the Red Templars were closing on them and then wrapped her arms around Aurum briefly.

“I’m coming back with everyone. I’m coming back, Aurum, and bringing everyone with me!”

All she could offer Sera was a tight smile and a terse wave.

She knew Sera meant what she was saying, and that gladdened her heart, but with all the pain that wracked her body and the thought of facing down seven red Templars on her own, with only the hazy promise of backup had her heart feeling even heavier than it already had.

Aurum had seen neither hide nor hair of the Sentinels, and she knew better than to even hope to see them ever again. The eluvian was destroyed, the Well of Sorrows defiled by a shemlen woman, and Aurum would not blame them, even in the slightest, if they only ever gathered to watch her die.

Sera stripped her quiver and bow from her body and pressed them to Aurum’s chest.

“You take this, I’ll be back!”

And then she was gone, darting across the green-glowing bridge, towards relative safety. Aurum watched her leave, waiting for her to cross the bridge before dropping the power of the Anchor.

The bridge crumbled away, and she felt the power fade away.

Her shoulders sagged, and without thinking too much about it, because she would stop otherwise, Aurum downed all but one of the vials of lyrium she had in her bag. The last, she pulled out, then looked at.

It was the lyrium from Cullen’s Templar kit. She put it back in her pouch. He had given it to her, and it was not hers to use, even in this time of need. She had enough power. Enough, for a barrier to cover herself, enough to fuel the magic that was going to be the only thing that kept her safe.

The Templars ran up on her.

She was not surprised to see Samson leading them.

Aurum steeled herself. The pain did not fade, but she allowed her awareness of it to wane. The world beyond the mundane was screaming, howling, screeching and clawing at her, and it took everything in her to stand against the onslaught and bring her magic to bear.

Samson’s mouth moved around words she did not trust herself to hear. She planted her feet, lifted her hand not wreathed in green veilfire and pulled a barrier from the Fade up in front of her.

Her world went grey around the edges.

Pain seared every breath she took, she could barely take a breath deep enough to stay conscious, but she had to. She had to stand and fight and do everything in her power to stay alert.

She felt the wash-out of magic, the way her power guttered at her fingers, the way the barrier flickered, and held firm. The barrier re-established itself, her power pulsed at her palm, and she remained standing. Defiant. Always defiant.

There was no time for words. She was out of words.

A sword clattered against the barrier she was holding, and she flinched at the sound and _feeling_ of its impact. As much confidence as she had in her own power, this was not a moment where she thought that this ended any way good. The false power of lyrium dragged at her as much as everything else in her day had.

It hurt.

This all hurt.

But she could not falter. She had to buy more time.

More time, she had to buy more time.

Aurum took a deep breath, closed her eyes against everything that was trying to argue for aggression. She had to just hold steady. Hold against everything in her that howled for blood. Hold against seven Red Templars for as long as she could. Keep the attention on her. Give Sera time. Give the Inquisition time.

Buy time, buy safety.

 _Protect_.


	49. The Inquisitor

She blinked and when her vision cleared, she was on her knees, one hand up, extended, fingers splayed wide as a barrier spell flickered back into existence in front of her. The Templars were closer now. She couldn’t hold a barrier large enough to force them back. They were advancing on her, slowly, carefully, wolves wary of the wounded Hart.

Aurum took a deep breath, trying to focus. The magic in her blood, even fueled by lyrium was running low. She could barely breathe, let alone try and keep her barrier intact. But she was protected Sera. She was stopping the Templars. She was protecting her clan. The Inquisition. She was protecting them.

That was her job.

Her pride.

Protect them.

The world around her swam, horrifying shades of red splashing across the Temple she saw and did not see. She shook her head again, trying to force her world into focus, no not the Fade, stop the Fade, no not that, the Veil separates us still, but the _real_ world, the world she belonged to, and yes, she might also belong a little bit to the Fade as well but this was different, she was trying to hold this line until…

Until…

She fell again, her left hand hitting the ground and her barrier snapped out of existence. There was nothing left in her. She had no more magic. Nothing else. She heard the heavy footsteps of armored men advancing on her. The bridge behind her was down, there was no escape, nowhere to run, and she had not the strength to run away, anyway.

Aurum took a deep breath, counted all the lessons her head, all of the words Deshanna had given her in her training, everything she had learned since, and _pulled_ something deeper from within her.

She did not need to look up to see her magic – there was a sharp **CRACK** as her barrier snapped up again, catching one of the templars in the chest and bifurcating him. The sharp gurgle of blood rushing into lungs and the screech of torn metal broke through the sound of her own pulse pounding in her ears.

Breathing was an ordeal.

Exhaustion had come so thoroughly to her that the muscle control it required to maintain a slow, steady breathing pattern was utterly beyond her.

She gasped for air like a downed halla, struggling to even get enough focus to remain conscious, let alone fight. Her chest hurt. Her back hurt. The arrows from before. Right, she’d been shot with arrows. That hurt. Holding herself up took every last iota of strength in her left arm, and even that was failing.

The scar from the sword of that _other_ templar ached. She had to try. She had to overcome the feel of arrowheads in her shoulder, tearing through muscle and cracking bone. She had to overcome everything. Bruises on her ribs, bones broken, blood everywhere, muscles torn, and she could not…she couldn’t…

Another breath. Her consciousness faded from her, but she kept her barrier up. The gentle glow of the barrier illuminated the world around her. Colors swam when her vision cleared. She knew where she was – on her knees, a single hand extended to maintain a faltering barrier around her, rocks biting into her knees, armor broken, covered in blood – but she couldn’t see it.

Not with her eyes, where colors and sounds and everything blended together into something that was not real in the way the mundane world was real, but was real in the way that the magical world was. Colors that defied any mortal’s explanation painted themselves through the air.

She had to hold on.

A little bit more.

A little further.

She could, so she would. She believed she could. She believed in herself. It hurt.

Her heartbeat felt like it was breaking her ribcage with every beating. Agony was a pale world for what she felt. Her heart was a greathammer slamming into her ribs. Every beat of blood was dams bursting in cacophonies of misery. She wanted to scream. To cry. To make it stop, to make _all of it_ stop.

But the words would not come to her, and she couldn’t make a sound. Her right hand was the only thing keeping the Red Templars from taking back the broken bridge, finding a way back to the rest of their army with news of what happened, with the Inquisitor as a hostage, and the magic that sparked with increasingly violent arcs.

She had to stop them. Hold them off.

She had survived Haven, she had survived Adamant, she would – survive – this. By gritting her teeth hard enough for her to hear and feel one of her molars pop in her mouth, shattering from the stress. Aurum couldn’t even feel the pain from that. Everything else hurt so much already that a little more pain wouldn’t do anything more.

Aurum gasped for air.

She had to focus. Strength came from within, and it required focus and determination. Aurum was strong. Deshanna had told her. So many people had told her that. She was strong. And that meant that she was not going to give in to any shemlen or any Templar, not while she still drew breath.

She exhaled heavily, her body collapsing into the breath. She still breathed. She was still strong enough.

A primal roar rattled itself out of her chest. Sure, maybe it had started as a pained howl, but by the time she registered that she was making a sound, it was too late for her to try to get a handle on her volume. She screamed, and screamed, and _screamed_ her throat raw and bloody. As soon as it started, she couldn’t stop. As soon as she found any sort of strength to scream, that was where all of it flowed through.

Aurum howled, and the world screamed with her.

There was nothing that she wanted more than to make the world burn as bright as her pain did. Her barrier flickered again, shifting to a deep purple color for a split second before solidifying and stabilizing once again.

Tears streaked her face, her lips split, power tore at her hand, welts rose across her skin as power lashed her with impunity. She could not control it. Not anymore. Everything was out of her control.

The world around her shook, and she couldn’t tell if it was her own body failing, the earth trembling, or something else. Her magic, her carefully guarded, carefully maintained, meticulously trained, agonizingly perfected magic roared out of her control.

There was no magic in her anymore, but the magic still pulled something from inside of her. She was not in control of it. It felt like there was something being spun out of her soul and pulled out of her against her will.

Aurum had heard the tales of mages who lost control of their magic. Possessed by some great power, a spirit, a demon, they just ceased to be, their power spinning out of their control until someone took them down. The Templars – the Templars had been made to do that, that was their job.

She was not in control of the fire that scorched the ground around her, nor of the Song that sprang to her lips, or of any other aspects of the magic that howled her fury and pain to the world around her. It all was torn away from her, hands not her own worked arcane symbols of ancient power and dominance with her body, and she stared up through a shattered barrier to the Templars that were coming to hurt her.

She was small, and vulnerable, crouching over the body of her mother, covered in blood, a gash over her eye oozing blood down her face, body aching from a cold bone-deep, staring up at Templars who wanted to hurt her. She had killed one. She had done it, but there were still more. So many more.

And she was so small.

And they were so big.

And there was a power in her chest, and whispers in her ear, and red, and red, and red everywhere.

There was a concussive boom that ripped through her. Purple lightning arced behind her eyelids, searing her eyes, burning tears into steam.

The ground rushed her, and everything went black. Again.

* * *

“Oh, she’s waking up, good. Twist that arrow in deeper. I don’t want her getting any funny ideas.”

Pain shot through her back. The tip of an arrow dug deeper into the bone of her shoulder blade and she dry heaved. If there had been anything in her stomach, it would’ve painted the ground next to where her head was being shoved into the ground, but there wasn’t. The world just spun faster.

Darkness came and went, and Aurum knew some amount of time had passed. She was on her knees, somehow.

A hand tightened on both of her shoulders, pulling her back up. Her head lolled back. The world tipped all around her. Her heart flopped unevenly in her chest, dangerously close to stilling of its own accord. She tried to blink, tried to get the world to focus but she couldn’t…she couldn’t. There was no more strength for her to call upon, there was nothing else she could do to stop whatever was happening.

An acrid smell hit her nose and she reeled back as best she could.

A gauntleted hand cuffed the back of her neck and forced her forward, towards the smell.

“Wake up, _Inquisitor_ ,” Samson snarled in her ear.

Honestly she wanted to say something snarling and ferocious, but the only thing she could force out of her throat was a pained whimper. She was burned up inside.

Aurum clenched her right hand and felt the skin across the back of her knuckles break and split open. Her blood felt cold on overheated flesh.

She was burned on the outside, as well.

Today had not gone well.

She felt a hand on her chin, the thumb reaching up to press against her lip, which she quickly discovered was split as the metal of his armor cut deeper into her mouth. There was a flash of a sickeningly out of place thought – _I match Cullen, cute_ – before the pain washed in.

It was not much, by contrast to how much the rest of her ached, but it was new and unpleasant.

Her lip curled in a snarl of her own as Samson pulled her head forward. She blinked, and slowly, her vision swam into focus. Samson was standing in front of her, a huge bruise marring the side of his face, and his other arm wrapped in a sling. Aurum felt a knife of pleased viciousness cut through the pain. He was still injured. She had hurt him bad, if the ribbon of blood down the front of his armor was a good indication.

She hoped it was.

“There we go. Can’t have you unconscious for your own Tranquility ceremony, can we? That right there would have been a _damn_ shame, knife-ear.”

The acrid smell was back and with her vision mostly returned to her, Aurum could see past Samson, to where a Red Templar, more red lyrium than man, was carefully heating a brand in the fire. It was already glowing red-hot, but she could see the sparks of blue throughout the metal.

The sun-seal had clearly been used many, many times before, if even heating it caused the lyrium in it to react. Or perhaps it was the remaining Red Templars so close to it that was making the lyrium that remained in the brand act out. Aurum didn’t know. She didn’t care to know.

She supposed, in a vaguely dissociative way, as she looked back to Samson, that she should be afraid. This was every Dalish mage’s worst nightmare. Tranquility. Separation from everything that they had been trained, from the passions of the elvhen, from ever being able to truly pass on the traditions. It was a horrible shemlen invention, Tranquility.

She had spent her life fleeing from its specter, and had done her best to break every Circle so that no one, elvhen or not, would be subjected to such a travesty ever again.

So yes, she saw the brand, and she knew she should be afraid.

But she was just too fucking tired to give a damn.

Samson pulled away from her and motioned for one of the Templars behind him to hand him something. The Templar did not move immediately, guarding whatever it was he held in his hand jealously, and looking up to Samson with **mutiny** burning in his eyes.

“It _sings_ the right way, Samson,” the man hissed, sending a furtive glance over Samson’s shoulder to Aurum. “Use the Red on her, let me keep this. I found it, it’s mine. By right, it’s mine.”

Samson, even injured and having to use his off-hand, drew his sword with surprising ease. He lopped off the head of his companion with a pained grunt of his own. Aurum wished she had the energy to flinch, or crow victory, or do something, but she could only watch, exhausted and in agony, as Samson stepped forward and pulled Cullen’s vial of lyrium out of the hand of the now-dead Templar.

“Damned waste, damned fucking waste,” Samson muttered under his breath, looking down at the body.

She should’ve left it behind. It seemed important at the time, to keep it on her, but as she watched Samson clutch the lyrium vial in his hand, she…regretted it. The importance was pale in comparison to the danger it now presented her. She did not _want_ to be Tranquil but there was nothing she could do about it. She was out of magic, out of options, and out of strength.

Whatever Samson wanted of her, he could take.

Even if there wasn’t a Red Templar standing on the back of her leg, hand on the back of her neck, sword drawn and ready to kill her if she even tried to get up. Even if she didn’t have two arrows jutting out of her left shoulder, she still would not have been able to mount much of a defense. She was alone. Horrifically alone. She was injured, she had no magic left in her, not even an iota, not even enough to light or snuff a candle. There were Templars around her, in plural, and…

Creators, she was just so _tired_ of this.

“Unlike everything else that’s happened so far, that truly was the biggest waste, Samson?” she rasped.

Her voice tasted like blood, and without thinking, she turned her head as much as the Templar behind her would allow and spat blood on the ground. She’d hate to be rude in her last moments, after all.

He huffed at her. She could see his eyes narrow, watched him draw himself up to his full height and stare her down. But honestly, she was just too fucking exhausted to get a shit about whatever it was that Samson needed in order to feel superior.

He had beaten her. Not fairly, and not in any way her dignity could really stomach, but there was just nothing left in her to try and fight back with.

Death was standing in front of her. She knew it. There was nothing she could do .She was going to die. Or be made Tranquil, which was as good as death, honestly. The least she could do was hope for some potshots at Samson’s dignity in the interim.

“Another will come, just like him, in short order, the waste is only one which could have been avoided had _you_ never come to be.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have blown the Conclave to fuck then, huh?”

He grunted, but did not have an immediate response. Instead, he looked down at the vial in his hand. He stared at it for a good long while, letting silence come across the Temple. Aurum had enough time to see that they had somehow, for whatever reason, pulled her back towards where the Well was. The hum of the Well in the background did not make anything any easier for her, incidentally.

It was just another note in the chaos around her.

Oh, how keenly she ached for peace and quiet, for rest and relaxation, from freedom from the ungodly amounts of pain. If this was Death, then fine. It was her death.

“That was not the plan from the start, and you should know that.”

Aurum snorted, and then had to spit again. Blood had flooded her nose. Apparently she had a nosebleed now too. Who cared. It all just fucking _hurt_ regardless.

“I didn’t know anything going to the Conclave. I was a fucking _spy_ you idiot. Sent by my clan to see what you fucking shemlen were gunna goddamn do to fuck my People over once again. I don’t give a shit about any of this, I was dragged into it kicking and fucking screaming, made Inquisitor against my will, and made this stupid shitting figurehead to a religion _I don’t even believe in._ ”

Samson seemed appropriately taken aback at her outburst, no matter the fact that she had to stop to gasp for air as soon as she was done speaking. Blood dripped from her freely, and the pain was starting to fade away in the bad sort of way. She was at the edge of everything, and holding on by the barest threads.

“You…” he started, and then shook his head and reconsidered his words. “But even after all that, you choose a _Templar_ to fuck?”

Aurum tried to roll her eyes, but the motion made her supremely nauseous.

“Who I am and am not fucking is none of your business. Cullen is the Commander of my army, not my fucking bedtoy.”

He smirked at her, waggling the vial of lyrium at her before handing it over to the Red Templar wielding the brand.

“Then why do you have his lyrium philter with you? In your bag, no less? Do you feed it to him along with y our sweet nothings, knife-ear?”

“Stop with the slurs. I’ve heard them so many times it doesn’t hurt to hear them before you kill me anyway. I’m tired, I hurt, I’m over this. Just fucking kill me or make me Tranquil or what have you. I really, magnificently, utterly _don’t care_ about your need to grandstand, Samson. I beat you when I was already torn down and gasping for air. I would beat you again if I had the strength and you had the courage to face me again.”

Samson looked properly taken aback at that, and Aurum grinned at him with teeth stained pink with her own blood.

“What, did you think that you had me pinned down, Samson? Really? After all this, you think that calling me “knife-ear” a few times will get me to crack? That waving my War Commander’s unused vial of lyrium in my face would get me to break down? You really are as stupid as all the reports said you were. When was it that the Templars kicked you out of the Order proper because of your addiction, hmm?”

The more she spoke, the more her strength came back to her. She had always been proud of her words and how she could use them in the midst of combat to wreak chaos and discord. If this was going to be the last time she could _feel_ the force of her words as they came out of her mouth, she was going to make damn good use of it.

She was stalling. Creators, was she ever stalling. The longer she could keep Samson away from the rest of Corypheus’ army, the longer they thought him gone to them, the longer the Inquisition had to get away, to retreat, to kill more of these fuckers.

“Shit that you are the one to do this. Should’ve let that Highland Ravager kill me. But instead, I killed it _first_. Should’ve killed you. Should’ve fucking killed you. No one would have blamed me, no one would have even blinked, but I was trying to do what was right by the Inquisition.”

She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice, and Samson blinked.

“You’re not afraid.”

It wasn’t a question. He was genuinely surprised by her fearlessness.

“I have no reason for fear.”

“You’re about to be made Tranquil.”

Aurum shrugged the only shoulder she could move. The other hurt too much, and she was almost certain the scar had burst in a way that was working on slowly making that entire arm useless. She’d be upset about that if she thought she was living too much longer. Dorian would know that the kindness is to kill her.

Someone would know what to do.

Yalain would know, beyond a doubt, what would need to be done. No life for the Tranquil, because it was no life worth living.

“Yes. And I cannot fight you. I have nothing left. I am broken and empty. I know that. You want me to scream? To beg? To cry and snivel? I am no Circle mage. I am no cowed apostate. I am Dalish. I am Keeper. You do not scare me. I will die today. I knew that the moment I broke the Eluvian.”

Speaking hurt and she could feel even the rage of her rightful fury bleeding out of her. Aurum had to blink black spots out of her eyes. Her body listed to one side, the strength gone from her back and chest. The Templar behind her caught her weight and forced her up straight again. Her head lolled forward, and she heard blood rushing in her ears.

A _Song_ whispered at her, the words completely unknowable. Before she could even try to really listen to it, it was gone, and Samson was grabbing her hair and pushing her head back. She heard the spitting of lyrium as a brand was quenched in it, the hum of its false Song rising and screaming her doom out…

“You should make me Tranquil quick, Samson. I don’t think I have much consciousness left in me anymore. Just brand me and get it over with. There’s nothing you gain by dragging this out, except a further exhausted Inquisitor. Won’t do you much good. How’s that triumphant defeat tasting now, huh?” she gasped, looking up at Samson, head cranked back as far and as painfully as he could manage.

Aurum could feel the shaft of one of the arrows in her back pressing against her ear. She didn’t even have the strength to try and move her ear away from it. It hurt. She hurt.

“Am I stealing your _thunder_ , Samson?” Aurum coughed, blood mixing with phlegm and spittle to land, unflatteringly, all across the front of his mangled chest plate. “Did you want me to scream up until you pressed the brand to my skin, and then revel in the way my scream cuts out? Is that it? Am I tainting your ill-got victory?”

His face pulled into a sneer, and Aurum matched it. She didn’t care how deep the cut on her lip went, she didn’t care how much it hurt – when had she broken her nose? – she didn’t care about any of that. She was tired. So tired. The exhaustion of ages was upon her and there was no way for her to muster anything more.

“This false bravado isn’t getting you anywhere, knife-ear,” he snarled.

“It’s gotten me this far.”

Again, she watched confusion take Samson’s face over, as he looked down at her, bleeding and broken at his feet, arms bound behind her back, ankles tied together, kneeling at the feet of what remained of his personal guard. Anyone else would be screaming. Any other mage captured and trussed like this would be howling for clemency, babbling anything, _anything_ to keep themselves from becoming Tranquil.

Not her. No.

She stared up at him, blue and purple eyes clear and bright, brows drawn down, and even through the exhaustion, he saw her fury.

“Give me that brand,” he said over his shoulder, reaching a hand back to take it. “We end this now.”


	50. The Execution

The brand was heated, quenched, heated, and quenched over and over again. Aurum could hear the lyrium’s song screaming. She didn’t have the energy to flinch away from the sound. It hurt, she could feel her ears flinching, but she had no control over it.

The sound hurt, that was for certain, but everything hurt. Everything hurt and she was just tired of it. Samson still stood in front of her, staring down at her, as if waiting for her to finally break and start screaming.

Not only was she purposefully not going to give him that satisfaction, but she had no real interest in making this a whole dramatic scene.

Haven had been dramatic, calling down an avalanche as she stared Corypheus down. It had been dramatic, it had been what she had thought would be her last stand and she had done everything in her power to make an indelible mark on history with that one stand. But she had survived. She had walked through a blizzard. She had been found, regained her health, and been asked again and again and again to do something more fantastic than that.

Aurum was all out of miracles.

Out of time, out of miracles, and definitely, absolutely, completely out of fucks to give.

She focused on breathing, experiencing what was going to be her final moments to the best of her awareness. The stones beneath her knees, warm and cracked, hummed with energy that stretched past eons. She could do nothing with the magic that hummed there. It felt like every part of her that had ever touched magic was burnt up. There wasn’t enough focus in her to even try to use any magic. She simply had to deal with the pain.

She could hear the red templars, and the broken song that hummed through the spires of Blighted lyrium that were consuming them. Had she been through less, had less been taken from her, had she tried to understand, had all her compassion not been thrown in her face at every step, perhaps she could have been understanding. But there was only hate in her heart for them. Their song. Their sickness, their discomfort. None of it mattered to her. She wanted them to hurt as much as she did.

She wouldn’t be able to do much anything to them, and she knew that. Her death, her Tranquility, would rob her of any chance she could hope for to exact revenge.

They were still a part of her that hoped that a rescue was coming, that she wasn’t going to be made Tranquil, wasn’t about to be submitted to that particular horror of the shemlen’s design. She was not going to tell Samson that. She was not going to give him the satisfaction.

Aurum took a deep breath. The air of the Temple smelled still, dry, old. Without the Well’s water throwing the heavy scent of magic into the air, the rest of the Temple smelled like elfroot and blood lotus. Certainly not the greatest of scents, not what she would want to remember in her last moments, especially with the heavy smell of lyrium burning laced through the air right alongside it.

There was nothing she could do about it, however.

This was what there was in her last moments. She had to enjoy it as much as she could. Find peace in what was to come to pass.

Bowing her head, she bit her lip and tried to find the spirituality she used to feel. She should pray, she knew. She should try for that sort of serenity, for that gentle peace of mind that came from worship of the Creators but there was a burning ember of resentment that kept her from being able to truly fall into her prayers as she used to.

Here she was, in the Temple of Mythal, with the knowledge of the Sentinels, those elves who had _seen_ the Creators, and _walked_ with them, and they had told these secrets to others. Not to her. They weren’t even coming to help her. They had judged her and found her lacking.

Despite everything she had done, she had been found lacking.

Regardless of all the things she had bled for, regardless of every fight she had fought, and every scrap of history her People had jealously protected from time immemorial, the fighting, the desperation, everything that the Dalish had been through and still managed to hold on to everything they had managed to jealously keep…she was not enough.

Never enough.

Not enough for the shems, not enough, even, for her own people.

Samson grabbed the back of her head, fisting his gauntleted hand in her hair and pulling.

Aurum grunted, her shoulders dropping as he tried to pull her up by the back of her head, with another man standing on the back of her knee. It hurt. It definitely hurt, but that was the point. He wanted to hurt her, more than she already was, and he was not going to stop until he was certain that there was absolutely nothing left in her for her to give.

The hunger in him demanded it, she could hear it in the song. If she was not so…tired, Creators, she was tired, but if she had not been, perhaps she could have continued to needle him, continued to pressure him continued to try and stall for time.

Her hope was a pathetic thing, and she knew it. No one would allow Sera to return to the Temple, not with Corypheus and his army right there. Cullen, Leliana, Josephine, the Empress – all of them would make the decision to leave. The Inquisitor was important, yes. But it was suicide to re-enter the Temple, as overrun as it was with red templars and the specter of Corypheus himself. She was one person. The information was secure, they had everything they needed.

She was injured, useless in a fight, bleeding and broken.

No one was coming.

She knew that. Of course she did.

It didn’t stop her from wanting someone to come. It couldn’t, not really. She was only mortal, and the greatest defining flaw of mortality was hoping someone else would come to help. No one would. And that was not bad. It was the better choice, it was the proper choice. If they came, they would have all been killed.

Hells, she didn’t even know if that had already happened. Samson was so far removed from the rest of his men, a rescue attempt could have been attempted, thwarted and resulted in the death of her friends already. She had no way of knowing.

If she could rip her hope out of her chest and form it into a weapon to spite Samson, she would have. At this point, she was only hurting herself. Tears pricked the corner of her eyes. Not enough to fall, barely even enough to get a proper tear to form up. But she felt them, and she felt her sadness open up in her chest, a yawning void of everything she had missed, everything she would miss and all that she regretted.

She felt, rather than saw or heard, the brand be quenched for the final time, the loud sizzle of the last of the lyrium was drawn into the metal. The Fade screamed around the brand, a sound that could not be heard, but thudded in her chest like a cannon’s burst.

Aurum made herself open her eyes and watch. Her last few moments would not be spent consumed in thoughts she would soon be lacking. No, she was going to watch everything end with eyes open and clear. She had watched the avalanche come to Haven. She had watched the bridge collapse at Adamant. She would watch the brand for as long as she could, and when the pain came, and went, she would witness it.

No one would ever be able to say that Aurum Elarsulahaja Tarasyl’an Te’las, trained of Istimaethoriel Lavellan, Blood Lavellan, had looked away from her own death, or shied from its approach.

The brand was an ugly thing, the iron that formed the body of it bore the patina of ages. For a practical certainty, it had been nearly as old as whatever bedamned Circle they had stolen it from had been. The tip, and it’s sunburst seal, glowed a blue so bright that it hurt to look at.

“Now, usually, Inquisitor dear, there’s some manner of pomp and circumstance to this. The mage starts screaming, we read them their final rights, they sign over whatever possessions they own to the Order, they change into the robes of the Tranquil, and then we brand them.”

She scoffed.

“Sounds like any execution. The executioners keep the shoes, right? Makes a pretty profit by killing mages left, right, and center. And then they work for you, it’s a beautiful circle. Good thing you have those Circles to feed the habit, right?”

Samson stared down at her, fury burning in his eyes once again. He had thought with her silence for so long that the witty repartee was over, and that this would proceed as normal. He was very clearly wrong. Aurum was going to give everything she had until she had nothing else to give.

“You don’t know when to stop, do you?”

“Keeper Deshanna had always said it was my best and worst quality,” she said with a roguish grin.

He didn’t have a response for that. He did not know who Deshanna was, didn’t know why it should matter. Aurum was painfully Dalish and he had never been the one to make any of their captured Dalish Tranquil.

“Give me that brand,” he snapped after a too-long moment of looking at her and trying to think about what it was that he wanted from her. “Inquisitor Aurum-”

“No, not _AR-_ rum. Aw- _rum_.”

“What?” Samson asked before he could stop himself.

“My name is not AR-rum. It’s softer, there’s a trill in it. If I’m going to be made Tranquil and be made to answer to everyone equally without any say in the matter, at least grant me the dignity of hearing my name said correctly one last time.”

He snarled at her, and Aurum just grinned back, triumphant. Creators, how she had wished to correct every shem’s mouth for every Orlesian and Ferelden butchering of her name. Marchers managed to pronounce everything wrong, so she was never offended by them, but fuck every Templar, anyway.

“Inquisitor Aurum,” he sneered, purposefully pronouncing as incorrectly as his tongue could manage to. “You are hereby sentenced to Tranquility by order of Corypheus-”

“Whose rightful reign I absolutely acknowledge, especially in matters regarding my own Tranquility.”

Samson looked nearly apoplectic. The brand in his hand gave an ominous pop as his hand tightened on it. He pulled her hair harder, and lifted the brand.

“Fuck it. You don’t deserve the words anyway. I’m going to enjoy this, knife-ear.”

He brought the brand up, and Aurum had to look away from how bright it was, casting her eyes down, where the glowing lyrium threw dancing shadows across the ground.

This was it, this was it, the last of everything she would ever really know.

She took a deep breath in, holding it as the brand came closer and closer to her, Samson drawing out every last moment as possible. Perhaps he was still hoping that she would break down, start screaming, give him any sort of other indication of how desperate she was. Whatever it was that he expected of her, she had no intention of giving it to him.

She would give him no satisfaction, even as she felt the heat of the brand rolling off the metal, even as his hand tightened in her hair to the point where he was ripping hair out by the root.

No, she dragged her eyes up past the searing bright blue of the brand to meet Samson’s eyes as best she could.

“ _Aurum!_ ”

“ _Inquisitor!_ ”

Two voices broke over the hum of the lyrium in her ear, and she turned her head. She saw Dorian, wreathed in the Fade, and next to him, Knight-Captain Rylen, charging forward, sword bared to the sky.

Samson turned quickly, looking over his shoulder. Varric, Vivienne, Cole, and Cassandra crested the hill just behind them.

“ _NO!_ ” she heard Dorian scream. She knew that he could see, he would know what was happening, he would know just how dangerous it all was. Tranquility – he knew it was the worst thing. The worst of all possible things. He wanted to protect her. She had to protect him.

Panic and fear flushed through her, and she struggled to get to her feet underneath her, bucking her head against Samson’s hand, surging up as he stabbed down with the brand. He didn’t care about getting it right, Samson just wanted to remove the Inquisitor from the playing field. His men may not be able to beat the fresh troops that were running in to support the Inquisitor, but he could remove her.

Permanently.

He stabbed down, Aurum stood up, and the brand hit flesh. She _screamed_ , the world screamed, and then…silence.

And darkness.

* * *

Dorian howled, hurling his magic forward. Beside him, Vivienne, who did nothing so crass as to raise her voice worked a spell in her hands that defied every spell she had ever worked before.

Far from them, Aurum slumbed to the ground, a thin curl of smoke leading up from her chest.

Cole vanished in a cloud of smoke, the assassin leading to do what he did best. Varric took up his position, Bianca already loaded and leveled at the Red Templars in front of them. He didn’t have time to be concerned with how many red templars there were, or where they were going. He was going to defend his friend.

Cassandra and Rylen were the slowest to come up, holding the rear. Cassandra had her shield ready and Rylen had his sword drawn. He was focused, intent. He had seen this before. He had watched mages be made Tranquil before. He knew what to expect. He knew what was coming.

Aurum did not move.

The red templars rushed the contingent of the Inner Circle, the only people who had felt comfortable enough to defy the orders given, out of friendship and loyalty. The fighters knew more than enough of each other for the battle to be predictable.

The Inner Circle was fresher, even if they had just sprinted their way through the Temple to get to where they were at. Their path had been surprisingly clear. Help had come from elves spread through the Temple, each of them pointing them deeper into the Temple by the fastest root in heavily accented Common.

None of them had questioned it because that was not the point of what was happening in that moment. They were here to save their friend. The Inquisitor. Aurum.

Steel met steel, shield met armor, and magic tore at the air around them. Two mages could wreak unimaginable havoc working together, and Dorian and Vivienne understood something of each other. Even if they rarely had the opportunity to work together, it was easy for Dorian to see where to support her and give her the space she needed to do what she excelled at. Aurum had taught him how.

They all pushed forward, cutting down the Red Templars methodically, not wanting to rush the battle, lest someone else get hurt. Even with their leader laying, concerningly still on the ground behind the Red Templar’s Commander. They wanted to protect her, defend her, but she was far away from them, and he wasn’t menacing her.

“Your Inquisitor is _gone_ ,” her crowed, even as one of Bianca’s bolts thudded into his chest. His armor was torn up, the bolt clearly did severe amounts of damage.

Samson staggered back, clutching his chest. With a snarl, Varric loaded and shot him again. Over and over and over again, Varric focused Samson down, not wanting to give the man even the slightest bit of respite. Samson stood over Aurum, his sword raised to brutalize her unconscious form.

Dorian charged through the Fade, appearing in front of Samson in a burst of veilfire. He swung his staff like a cudgel, cracking Samson’s head open, and dropping the Commander to the ground. He spun on his heel and dropped to his knees at Aurum’s side. The others dispatched the rest of the Templars as fast as they could, rushing in towards Aurum.

“No, no, no, no, come on, come on, Aurum, come on, no, not like this, come on,” Dorian chanted, slipping into frantic Tevene as he smoothed hair out of her eyes and cradled her body in his arms.

Cole appeared next to Dorian, kneeling down and hesitantly touching Aurum’s unmoving body.

Her chest rise and fell, slowly and smoothly, but she did not seem to register their presence around her in the slightest. She was unconscious, and she was not waking up, even as Dorian shook her gently.

Vivienne approached slowly, going to her knees on the other side of Aurum’s unmoving form. Her hands, wreathed in healing magics, gently ran down Aurum’s savaged form. It was clear that Aurum had been…in a horrible fight. She was broken. She had fought, and fought, and fought, and they hadn’t been with her.

With careful fingers, Vivienne peeled back Aurum’s tunic’s collar.

There, in its horrible, terrible, glory was the sunburst seal of the Tranquil. It glowed dully in the light, blue and flickering. The Tranquil.

“It’s not on her forehead. Maybe…” Vivienne started, looking up to Dorian, whose face was streaked with tears already, smudging his carefully applied kohl. “Maybe it won’t take. Maybe. Maybe she’s going to be okay. We…we don’t know yet.”

Dorian sobbed, clutching Aurum’s body to his chest, rocking back and forth. A wail ripped out of his chest. Cole put a hand on Dorian’s shoulder, knowing that in this moment, he had to let Dorian feel his pain.

Varric, Cassandra, and Rylen stood apart from the mages and watched. Cassandra knelt, bowing her head in prayer. Rylen covered his mouth, and looked away.

Varric put Bianca down on the ground, and with an exhausted grunt, he sat on the grass. He cradled his head in his hands, his eyes closed. The Red Templars were all defeated. Those that still lived were incapable of moving, or battling. The air was still again.

If he paid too much attention to it, he could smell Aurum’s burned flesh. The sticky-sweet smell of lyrium, too.

She wasn’t moving.

He didn’t want to have to write a letter to Cullen, or explain to Cullen what had happened. If they…

It didn’t help to think about what could have been. They just had to wait and see. When Aurum awoke, they’d know. They’d know.

Praying to Andraste, to the Maker, in this place, felt wrong. He didn’t know where to turn, or what to do. Waiting was all they had.


	51. The Spirit

Aurum did not move.

Nothing had changed. Night had fallen, the few Templars that remained in the area had been disposed of. Samson was trussed like a stuck pig, his armor removed, and destroyed, along with his sword. There was nothing they could do about the spires of red lyrium that burst through Samson’s flesh. So they left him where he was.

He didn’t even try and talk to them, not even making a halfway attempt at crowing victory or answering any of the questions Dorian shouted at him.

They tried to make their friend comfortable, folding one of the packs, stuffing it with the most fragrant royal elfroot they could find, covering her with a cloak when she started to shiver. She lay where she had fallen, near the lip of the Well, unmoving save for the slow rise and fall of her chest.

Vivienne and Dorian took turns sitting next to her, using what magic they had available to them to heal her wounds. There were so many. Every pass revealed something else, from burned veins, to puncture wounds from arrows, to deep bruises from catching a sword on her Knight-Enchanter’s armor.

How she had managed to fight back to where Sera had said they had been, and then hold there – they had found the scorched grounds of her last stand, and the mages had flinched from the unsettling, eerie press of magic still heavy in the air – as wounded as she was a true testament to just how powerful she was.

But she did not move. Did not rouse herself at Dorian’s whispered insistences, did not react as Vivienne fixed her collar for the umpteenth time, did not even react to Cassandra’s whispered prayer to the Maker, or to the sotto voce prayer Cassandra made to Mythal herself, bowed over Aurum’s head.

None of the elves who had helped the Inner Circle come this far into the Temple appeared.

Cole stuck next to Aurum, his hands carefully flitting over her legs, trying to keep her warm when the trembles took her body. He seemed completely unwilling to talk to anyone, even though Varric did try. Varric knew that Cole had to have some knowledge of what Tranquility was, given…who Cole’s body had been back before this adventure had started, but Cole was uninterested in talking to anyone.

He didn’t even murmur soft nothings to Aurum. He just watched her carefully, his face drawn down into a gentle frown. Cole was clearly perturbed, even if he did not want to give voice to whatever thoughts he had.

 No matter how quiet it was, there was tension in the air.

“We need to get moving, soon,” Rylen said gently to the group, looking from Dorian, to Cassandra. “The Red Templars…they’re still in the area. Even if they don’t know what happened here, we can’t stay and wait forever. This position isn’t tenable. We’re over-exposed and liable to get attacked from all sides. We have to move.”

Cassandra shook her head.

“You’re right. I don’t like moving her when we don’t know what’s wrong, but…staying here will only endanger her more.”

Dorian frowned, looking down at Aurum. The sun seal’s brand glowed against her flesh, a harsh blue mark against her dusky skin. The skin around the brand was broken, and bleeding, with ribbons of lyrium lancing through the blood. It hummed sickening tunes, and even when he went to wipe the blood and lyrium away from the wound, it reached for him the same any raw lyrium would.

“Rylen, can you carry her?” Dorian finally asked, looking up to the Templar.

There was something in him, vicious and terrifying that did not want any _fucking_ Templar touching Aurum. It was a Templar who had done this to her, it could have only been done by a Templar, and it was a _travesty_ of the highest order that it had happened and that she had been alone to try and defend herself against the indefensible.

But Rylen was the strongest of them. The two mages could manage, but it would keep them from being able to defend the group.

Dorian sent a look to Vivienne. Madame de Fer had seen much in her tenure as Grand Enchanter, had undoubtedly seen mages made Tranquil before. A fury unlike anything he had ever seen in her had been roused behind her steely eyes. It would be better if the two of them were left to battle any Red Templars or allies of Corypheus.

Rylen nodded, and moved to kneel down next to Aurum. Dorian stood slowly, his chest aching something terribly.

He had felt the moment that the brand had touched her flesh. The bond they shared, that blood magic, forbidden, all but black magic that she had shared with him to count him _brother_ , to count him as _belonging_ , to make him _family_ , it had cut out with enough force to stagger him.

Hope burned in his chest, but he knew already what had happened. Her magic was gone. That bond was gone. He had been her First, he had been her brother, and he had failed her. The knowledge of that, the weight of it, it would haunt him for the rest of his days. But he had responsibilities now. Aurum would not have wanted him to let them fall to the wayside because she was gone.

If she had died, his task would have been the same.

Now, however, they were simply left with a body in the shape of his friend that breathed still, but did not move or speak. He was scared for what that meant. If she were Tranquil, if she were gone like he feared she was…Dorian did not know what he was going to do.

“Vivienne, take the lead with Cassandra. I will stay next to Rylen. Varric, Cole, in the middle. We’ll move slow, retrace our footsteps in and hopefully the cover of night will keep us out of their way.”

Everyone nodded. They knew better than to argue. It was what Aurum would have said, anyway. Vivienne could defend herself as a Knight Enchanter, wrap herself in magic and summon a sword. Cassandra was, well, Cassandra, and could handle just about anything thrown at her. The two rogues in the middle got them the utility they needed, and Dorian would die before letting someone touch Aurum’s body.

He took a deep breath, and shook out his hand. He didn’t want to be in charge. He wanted his friend back. He wanted Aurum to wake up and be alright.

But she wasn’t going to be. She was gone. Something in her was gone.

He knew it. He knew something was gone. Something had been taken out of her and held behind some sort of wall. She was gone. He didn’t want to believe it. He didn’t want to say the words. He didn’t want to give any sort of credence to that horrible, horrible statement, but…

Aurum was gone.

Rylen picked her up carefully, holding her over his shoulders, careful to be gentle, or as gentle as he could possibly be, given the circumstances. Dorian reached up to gently, gently, touch her cheek. Her skin was cold.

His heart hurt.

Prepared and ready to go, they all looked to Dorian, waiting for the order that Aurum would usually give.

He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. The likelihood of there being anyone behind them was slim, but it didn’t matter. They had to be prepared for anything.

“Let’s go.”

Vivienne nodded, her gaze steel. For a surety, Dorian pitied anyone who came up against her. She may be Iron, she may have been forged in the fires of Orlais, but she was still a mage, and the loss of a friend, especially in such a tragic, horrible way…it _did_ something to you. To her. To all of them.

He understood.

He took a deep breath.

It was time to hea-

 There was a roar from in front of them. Another contingent of red Templars rushed in. Dorian’s breath caught in his throat. Aurum was still unconscious, draped over Rylen’s shoulders. Vivienne did not hesitate, flinging magic at the attackers. Cassandra shouted, crouching own beneath her shield, surrounding herself in holy energy.

Varric hefted Bianca, and Cole vanished. Rylen knelt, putting Aurum back down on the ground, and Dorian pulled his magic around himself. There were twenty Templars facing up against them. Battle torn, bleeding, broken, but still. There was a fight to be hand. And they were ready.

Dorian did not need to give the command to attack. They knew what they needed to be done. Aurum could not defend herself in this moment, so they would have to.

Rylen knelt, freeing his blade.

A hand reached up and caught his wrist. He looked down. Purple eyes stared up at him. The sounds of the others engaging in battle were loud and overwhelming, but Aurum stared up at him. She stared up at him, and he couldn’t think to even try and move away from her.

Her hand was cold on his wrist. He was transfixed by her gaze. Her mouth opened, and he _heard_ her voice, echoing in his head, completely overwhelming any thoughts he could have had. Rylen nodded. He would do as she asked. He helped her to her feet, and together, they turned from the field of battle.

Towards the Well.

* * *

The battle was brutal. It was hard. The Red Templars, while not fresh, and some clearly having already been on their last legs for a while, still outnumbered them greatly.

Vivienne threw herself into the battle, Knight-Enchanter’s blade singing. She had been made a fighter of intrigue and politics of necessity, but she had always had a warrior’s heart. She had chosen her specialization for the specific purpose of keeping herself safe, alive. Everything she had done, everything she had fought for, everything…she _believed_ in Aurum, and the things Aurum had believed in.

It was hard for Dorian to try and keep an eye on Vivienne throughout the fight, because she looked so different than Aurum in battle. He had gotten so used to fighting with Aurum, accounting for her movements and attitude and everything she did, that he found himself reaching for her magic like he would have if Vivienne was Aurum.

But she wasn’t, and that hurt.

So he fought with everything he had, letting the fullest extent of the power he had burning in his body roar. Fear, death, undeath, all of it, he pulled out of the Fade. He could not give enough power to the screams that tore out of his throat, so he forced it into his magic. He was furious, he was sad, he was riding waves of agony of loss.

Aurum was his _family_ , she had chosen him, she had chosen him despite everything about him that he doubted, that he hated, that he loved but no one else did. She had accepted him with open arms, she had taken him into her Clan, allowed him to comfort her in return. She was his best friend.

And she was _gone_.

Cassandra fought for justice, for the right actions, for the indignity and the protection of the Inquisition. She had to have Faith, she had to trust that what had happened was not the End of all things. She had to have faith, she had to hold on, she had to continue believing that this was a battle that could be won.

Varric just wanted his friend back. Aurum had fought and bled and damn near died for _his friends_. She had defended Hawke, making sure that Hawke could get home to Fenris. She had done everything in her power to keep his friends safe, and in doing so, had become one of his friends as well. Tranquility had been something that had terrified Anders, something Anders had railed against as part of his manifesto, and now…she suffered it.

Cole just tried not to think about it, tried not to think about what he had felt, what he had seen in Aurum. It was unusual for him to see something and not say it immediately but he wasn’t certain what it was he saw, or why he saw it. He didn’t want to talk about it and cause drama and unneeded pain for everyone else. He didn’t have the words for what he saw, and he was not sure that starting to talk about it _now_ of all times would be good.

Her friends, her glorious friends, all of them battled against the people who had hurt Aurum. They bled. They raged, and they fought, and they bled.

Because they loved her.

And this, this all hurt. She had meant so much to them. She meant so much to them. Every fight had been important, vital to the Inquisition’s next steps, but…Maker, this was different. Aurum had gone down time and again to help them. This was the least they could do. Fight for her. The battle was a tough one, but not impossible. They may not owe anything to her, not in the way you owe someone who has employed you, but she had fought and bled for them before.

Hells, she had taken time to make sure each of them had achieved everything that they had brought to her as a wish of theirs.

So yes, it hurt when a sword got through Cassandra’s guard and opened a line of red on her ribs, but Vivienne was there with a shout, a sweep of healing magic and a barrier. It was scary when Cole vanished beneath the bulk of a massive Red Templar, but in a haze of smoke, he reappeared on top of the Templar, his blades flashing out and cutting into it. It made the world stop when Dorian stumbled, when Varric was caught mid-reload, but they still fought.

* * *

Rylen held her hand, helping her down into the Well. She shuddered as soon as her legs touched the little bit of water that remained in the ornate, ancient Well. Rylen was trying to be gentle, trying to move slowly, and be supportive.

He could see magic flickering in the water around her, like lightning dancing on the surface, racing towards her.

Like cracks in a window, they spiderwebb’d across the water’s surface, circling Aurum as she fell down into it. He watched as her eyes fluttered closed, as her body relaxed down into the Well. Water closed over her mouth and nose. Bubbles burst from her mouth, an exhalation that set the magic blazing in the Well. Her blood leeched from where it had stained her clothes, thin ribbons of red that were twisted, twining with purple.

Rylen watched, kneeling at the side of the Well, uncertain of what he was supposed to do next. She had told him to take her to the Well, to give her to the Well, to let what was going to happen, happen, and most importantly – not to touch the water, himself. Where it had splashed on him, the water burned his skin.

Whatever it was that was in the water of the Well, it was not meant for men like him.

He wasn’t even certain it was meant for women like the Inquisitor. But there…in the way she had asked, with her words sliding between his ribs, echoing in his mind with nothing emanating from her mouth. Honestly, he wasn’t even certain that the voice he was hearing even belonged to Aurum, but he was powerless to resist what it asked.

A Tranquil mage…did not speak the way the words had been spoken to him. They could not speak in the ways that made lights dance behind his eyes, or that made the lyrium in his chest rumble. Aurum wasn’t _gone_ , not yet, she wasn’t _Tranquil_ , not really.

He had to believe that.

He had to believe that that was true, because he did not know the word she had used when she had talked about what the Well was. He dared not ask, he dared not question, because this whole place was a place that belonged to the Elvhen and their own histories were hard enough for a human like him to comprehend, let alone remember already.

This temple, and everything that stood in it, was from a time long before the humans were even in this area. He was no fool. He knew the histories that the Andrastian religion would have denied. He knew that their histories were only a part of the truth. But.

It was one thing to know.

It was another too look down at the Inquisitor, in a pool of water, the thin stream of bubbles trailing out of her mouth slowly trailing off, with magic humming in the water and the spaces in between the water and think that this was all okay.

But he didn’t have a choice. Not anymore. He had led her down into the water, and then let go of her.

What would come next was out of his hands.

He tried to catch his breath, tried to put so many of the thoughts in his head out of his mind. He had to have faith – _in what, the elvhen gods? in anything?_ – that what he had done had not just doomed the Inquisitor, but saved her.

At the very least, that he had not hurt her any further than Samson and his red templars had.

* * *

The Inner circle had grouped up together, clustering at the base of the stairs up to the Well, pushed closer together than they would have otherwise liked by the addition of fresh red templars to the field. They had been handling the twenty there had originally been with the same usual grace they handled any battle where they were outnumbered.

The fresh fighters, however, threw a wrench into any sort of strategy they could have hoped to have in that moment. It was attrition, now. Make them bleed for every advance, take out only those they were certain they could reach without advancing too far or over extending themselves.

Aurum had taught them all something about waiting. Being patient in a fight. She was liable to fly off in a direction all on her own when she was confident that they were going to win the day without a problem. But when there was a solid threat to the group, she was the first person to put herself in the path of whatever was coming for them. She had won battles for them for simply being more patient, waiting for the enemy to overreach.

When they had been made to face armies that could otherwise outstrip them easily, she was the first to urge them to be slow, take it easy, wiat and be patient. There was no need to run off if there was no need for haste. In defense, defend.

They drew together, a tight knot of fighters, giving the two warriors and the assassin the front line as Varric and Dorian held the back, with ranged support. Vivienne kept Cassandra up with healing spells as needed, while still holding tight to her Knight-Enchanter’s blade and keeping the templars at bay. Cole exploited every weakness he could find, darting in and out of the range of templars, forcing them to chase him, overextend, leave themselves open for an attack, either from himself, or someone else.

Knowing how to work together was their advantage over everything the Red Templars tried to throw at them. They were a unit, they were friends, and they knew how they moved. It was a gift, a precious thing, something they could have only because Aurum had brought them together. She had led them, she had guided them, and allowed herself to be guided in turn.

Maker, this was nothing like anything they had faced before. It did not matter. Not anymore. Not right now. Aurum needed them to fight.

For her. For her, they’d do everything for her. Even in unimaginably difficult circumstance.

There was an uncomfortable number of enemies amassed against them. They had their own injuries, they were flagging, but they still fought. Aurum had fought through worse. Aurum had done tthis before. Together, they could…they could.

They had to.

With a cry, Vivienne clutched her shoulder and went to a knee, and Cassandra stepped over her, crouching down behind her shield, trying to call attention to herself as a target to give Vivienne time to find her feet again.

Cole appeared in smoke, but had to vanish almost immediately as a huge greatsword cleaved the air he occupied. He popped back in next to Varric, a hand pressed against his side, pale skin paler as blood dripped from him. Varric grunted, reaching out to grab Cole and push the assassin back behind him. Dorian threw fear at the Templars in front of them, trying to give his friends the space they needed to recover.

He was not desperate, not yet. There was no reason for desperation. They were being pushed, and that did not quite mean that they were losing grounds or even in the position to start considering a retreat.

It was nothing more than a momentary danger. Worse things had happened.

They had killed a _dragon_ before. Multiple dragons. They could do anything. Dorian took a step back, his heel hitting the stair at the base of the well.

From behind him he felt, not saw, the Well – because yes he had been paying attention to what he could read as he walked through the Temple – rumble. The Fade around him warped and twisted, as if great spires of power were being built behind him. He had felt something similar to this before, back in Tevinter, when all the magisters and the Archon had been working on some massive spell or another. He had been too young to be able to ask about it himself, but he remembered the feeling.

He couldn’t turn to look behind him. Not just then, no matter what. His curiosity could get one of his friends killed, and that would be utterly unacceptable.

The Red Templars pushed forward, pressing an advantage. Cassandra had Vivienne behind her, Vivienne’s Knight Enchanter armor broken, and the lazurite beads that had formed it hanging from threads. Vivienne threw spell after spell, and Dorian supplemented as best he could, threading spells through the chaotic battlefield. He was flagging, running low on magic, and he knew everyone else was in much the same circumstance.

Varric was low on crossbow bolts, and if he had another pocketful of caltrops, Dorian would have to question him on which of his tailors had sewn such deep pockets. Cole, spirit-boy he may be, had lost one of his daggers in the melee and was bleeding from more than a few non-superficial wounds. Cassandra would never dare look even a little haggard, and was a bulwark against the tides of red templars that threw themselves at her feet, but even she would tire eventually, and there was only so much she could block before overextending herself.

Something would have to change.

They could win this, he knew they could win this, but it wasn’t going to be an easy victory, and they’d still be stuck in the Temple, with who knows how many other fights between where they are now and getting _out_ of the Temple.

The Well rumbled again, audibly this time, shaking the ground beneath everyone’s feet. Cassandra stumbled, but luckily for her, so did every single Red Templar. Dorian staggered as the Well behind him **exploded**.

Magic burned through the Fade, a ferocious, soundless rush of power. Dorian had to blink afterimages of the Black City out of his eyes, and by the time the images faded out of view, something had changed.

He didn’t have the words for it until he heard a muttered, awestruck, and dumbfounded “ _Preserve me_ ,” from Rylen.

Dorian turned.

Aurum stood, hand on a weapon – he hesitated to even come close to referring to it as a mage’s stave - that crackled with veilfire. The brand on her chest glowed a bright, burning blue, and lyrium dripped from the still-bleeding skin, ribbons of blue staining her clothes.

Water dripped from her body, but when it hit the ground beneath her, it sizzled. Magic danced in the water, darting across her skin, lit with colors that defied any mortal ability to describe. Where there had been grievous wounds just starting to heal, there was raw, pinked flesh, whole and hale, but something glowed from the inside of her skin, pulsing against the healed wounds in time with her beating heart.

Lyrium dripped from her nose, too, bright ribbons of electrifying blue spearing down her lips and chin. It sparked magic against her lips, burning her skin, spreading blackened scarring across her face. She was breathing hard, lip curling in painful grimace, shoulders tense.

 “ _Maker_ ,” Dorian whispered as he looked up to meet Aurum’s eyes.

Where he would have once seen her eyes, there were just deep, vast voids of _purple_ light. It splintered out from her eye sockets, sparking in the air around her. Possession.

Aurum was possessed.

But not be a demon. It was not a demon that would twist her body, shape her into a horror, no. No, it couldn’t be a demon. Because if it had been a demon, it would not have lifted Aurum’s arm, wreathed as it was in veilfire and pulled a curtain of temporal energy over every single one of the Red Templars.

He had watched her work that same magic against dragons, as soon as she had figured out the way to pull the Anchor in her hand to warp time like that, freezing the dragon in a slowed loop of time as the rest of them had attacked.

Dorian knew it was not Aurum in control, but his words all froze in his throat as he tried to parse just what it was that he was seeing. Purple was not a color he knew the correspondence with. Spirits that came in _purple_ were ones he had never encountered, and in the middle of battle, blinking a migraine that came on out of nowhere, he could not get his memory to think back that far to his training.

The next breath he took burned his lungs with the magic in the air, and he had to look away from Aurum-or-whatever-was-in-her. The light was blinding.

He heard an exhalation, long and labored from behind him.

And then there was a sigh. Out of the corner of his eye, Dorian saw Aurum-who-was-not-Aurum, spin her spear around (it was not a mage’s stave, not by any meaning of the term) and prepare it for an attack. She tensed, crouched, and then vanished, Fade-stepping out of his line of sight.

Tranquil mages couldn’t _do_ that.

Aurum-who-was-not-Aurum could not be Tranquil if the magic flowed through her like that. The Anchor was one thing, Dorian was more than passing certain that anyone who had possessed the Anchor would have been able to manipulate its power the way Aurum did wih even a little bit of proper training.

But magic – the fade step – that had to come through a mage. Possession did not make mages of nonmages, and it certainly couldn’t take a Tranquil and remove that blight from them.

Unless it could.

Dorian held his breath, trying to keep from becoming overwhelmed by the thought. What if it _could_. What if that was what he was seeing?

It didn’t matter. Aurum-who-was-not-Aurum leapt from the Fade, spear thrusting forward into the throat of a wholly unaware Red Templar. She pulled the weapon free, spun on her heel , a knee rising, spear already stabbing, and vanished again.

This time, she reappeared mid-air, lunging through a momentary rift in the Fade to thrust her spear into the eye-slit of another Templar’s helmet. It was all the continuation of one long, sinuous strike.

 Aurum had _never_ moved like that, Dorian knew, watching with his mouth dropping open as Aurum-who-was-not-Aurum dropped gracefully to a single foot, spun and vanished again, the Fade welcoming her into itself with an ease of movement that no one could ever hope to match.

The fight was over before Dorian could make sense of what was happening. The one who was Not-Aurum leapt from the last rift, turning and readying her spear in case another Templar sprang up out of nowhere. With no one else there to stab, she relaxed.

For a moment, there was breathless silence.

Dorian pushed in front of Varric, and when he drew up next to Vivienne, she put a concerned hand on his elbow. She did not dare give word or voice to the fear that she found growing in her chest, but looked up to Dorian, her eyebrows drawn down. She was undoubtedly just as worried as he was, if not more so.

He could only offer her a nod of solidarity, of acknowledgement of whatever concern she had before he had to step past her. Dorian needed to know what it was that had happened. What had he missed in his desperate fighting to keep everyone safe?

Slowly, carefully, he approached the Aurum-who-was-not-Aurum, trying to take as wide a berth as possible, so that he wouldn’t inadvertently set her off. After what he just saw, he wasn’t certain that he could defend himself against whatever it was that was using Aurum’s body. And if it was Aurum, he wanted to hold his sister close and make sure she was well.

Aurum-who-was-not-Aurum turned to look at him. Lyrium ran from her nose and from the brand on her chest in thick ribbons.

She was not well.

He could feel the way the fade warped around the lyrium. It was no illusion, no. It was real. Her skin was burning almost as bright as her eyes were. Aurum was not in there. She was gone.

“Who are you?” he asked, as she asked the same question of him.

Dorian blinked. She didn’t.

“Who are you, _Tavinte_ , that I would be told to call you son?”

His jaw dropped. The voice was still Aurum’s, but the accent was thicker, different, more Fereldan than Marcher. The Aurum-who-was-not-Aurum straightened to Aurum’s full height, and then caught herself when she realized that that height was different. Her chin tucked down and she lifted Aurum’s left hand up.

“What have they done to my daughter?”


	52. The Mother

“…You are Aurum’s-”

“Yes, yes I am, I,” she stopped herself, shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, I understand what’s happening.”

The spirit-in-Aurum’s body sighed. She held both of her palms up, looking over the scars and wounds that traced up the body of her daughter. A look of sadness and sorrow crossed her face, her brows drawing down.

Carefully, she ran her fingers through the Anchor.

“Why could life not have been kind to my daughter…”

Dorian took a step closer.

“Liluye, yes?”

The spirit blinked Aurum’s eyes and turned to Dorian.

“That was my name. Yes. That was me,” she said sadly, closing her eyes.

Aurum’s shoulders rolled forward, and slowly, gently, knelt down on the grass. Her spear fizzled and popped, before undoing itself back into the Fade. The spirit in Aurum’s body hugged Aurum tightly, collapsing against her own arms as if trying to hug herself all the harder. Decades of hugs in a single moment.

“You are my son, her brother…speak to me, _Tavinte_ , tell me of my child. Why is she here. What happened here?”

“It’s a long…long story, Liluye. But, but I need to know – _Where is Aurum_?” Dorian said quickly, reaching out to put a hand on Aurum’s shoulder. “Is she still….alive? Is she in there? What _is_ this?”

The spirit turned Aurum’s head to meet Dorian’s eyes. For a long moment, she just stared at him, Aurum’s eyes brightly burning pits of purple magic, bright enough to leave afterimages in his eyes. The others of the Inner Circle, including Rylen, started gathering around Aurum who-was-not-Aurum, staring down at her as she looked balefully at Dorian..

“There’s not enough time. Not for me…not anymore. Aurum is gone away inside, trapped beyond the boundary of the seal. I am on borrowed time, I should have died and become one with the Fade decades ago but,” her hand drifted up to the scars over Aurum’s eye. “…but I had to protect her. She wouldn’t have been able to protect herself. She was so _young_ , my son, you have to understand, please, please understand I didn’t do what I did lightly.”

Dorian stared, confused.

Vivienne crossed her arms, frowning at the scene before her.

“Her magic came too young, didn’t it?” the Grand Enchanter said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “She said you had been killed, and then her magic had come to her. But that’s not it, is it?”

Liluye turned her attention, slowly, and purposefully to Vivienne. For a long moment, all the spirit did was look at the other woman. It was a stare-down between the two of them, neither willing to acquiesce in the competition. Vivienne cracked first, her gaze dropped from the vast, unknowable voids of purple energy burning in the sockets of Aurum’s eyes.

“No, it is not it. I protected my child the only way I could think to do. It was an act of desperation. Fine. Yes. I should have done something else, or found another way. But I did it. And I kept her alive,” Liluye said slowly, not moving her gaze from Vivienne.

Vivienne seemed to melt as Liluye spoke, her arms uncrossing and shoulders coming forward.

“So what…happened in the Well?” Dorian asked, trying to get Liluye’s attention back. He was burning up with questions and he was trying to stay calm but everything inside of him was chaos. “Where is Aurum?”

Liluye sagged, leaning backwards, propping herself up as best she could on a single elbow. She was clearly exhausted, eyes half-lidded, lyrium still leaking from whatever wounds were inside of her. Aurum’s chest rose and fell in even, measured tones even as the Spirit – _her mother_ – spoke with the hushed, clipped tones of someone exhausted.

“You have to understand. The Well is…so much more than just water. I wanted to protect her, she wanted to protect you, the magic in the Well carries those powers as well. They...son, listen. Aurum can be brought back, this isn’t over, she is still whole within herself but she cannot – it will be complicated, you have to convince her that – this will, they will, they _can_ bring her back, but it will be hard, for you, for her, for everyone. A struggle. She can do it. I know she can, she’s so strong, even if-”

The purple light flickered in the pits of Aurum’s eye sockets before blazing brighter.

“I don’t have time. I don’t have time for this,” she snapped, reaching up to grab Dorian’s arm and pull him down to her level. “You keep her safe, _Tavinte_ , please. Keep her safe, she’s all we have left, the last of our line, she has to…she’s my _daughter_ , Dorian. I can’t ask, I don’t have time to ask, after all these news scars on her body, and I can’t hold onto this any longer. I’ve protected her since that night, I have kept her magic safe and done what I could to protect her. This is all I have left, this is the last of it, right now, and, and, and I just, I just want her to know how much she means, and how much of what I did was all to keep her safe, I’ve done everything I could, everything I could hope to do. She’s my child, my only child, the last, the only one and I need…I need her to….know…”

She seemed to be running out of energy. The lyrium bleeding from Aurum’s body was thicker now, as if it was congealing, rolling in slower and slower ribbons down her face and chest.

The purple light flickered again, and for a moment, Aurum’s body went entirely limp, the lyrium blackening. The light flicked on once again, and the lyirum burned bright blue.

Her grip tightened on Dorian’s arm and she pulled him down again, close to her.

“You have to tell her that she did the right thing. This was the best course of action. She did the _best_ thing she could have done. Trust herself. Trust what she did. Listen. Learn. She’s loved. I’ve loved her forever. I will. Always.”

Dorian could only nod, mute despite the words that scorched the back of his throat. No one else dared talk, no one dared to interrupt, everyone just watched, breathless as the spirit made Aurum’s body shudder. Her breathing had not changed in the slightest, her chest still moving slowly and evenly, as the spirit’s light and glow of the lyrium guttered out, like a candle burning its last bit of wick.

Aurum’s body arched, and then collapsed, completely unmoving.

It looked as if she were sleeping, with cooling lyrium sloughing off of her skin, leaving the flesh beneath bruised and blistered.

Dorian gently reached out to put a hand on Aurum’s shoulder. She didn’t move. Her eyes were closed, scorch marks marring the delicate skin around her eyes. There were no spots of blood, just blackened skin, and broken blisters. She looked as if she was merely asleep after a long battle.

“Oh, Aurum…Aurum, please,” he whispered, gathering her up, and cradling her to his chest. “Come on, Aurum…”

But she was limp, and unmoving once again. Whatever had happened, whatever it was that _this_ was now, whatever had happened, they had cycled all the way back to the place they had been in the beginning of this whole thing.

Sure, now there were corpses of Red Templars everywhere, and maybe they had some sort of idea of what had happened in the Well, and what the Well was, but Aurum was still utterly unmoving. The scar on her shoulder, the one from their _own_ Templars who had attacked her, was split open, bleeding blue along with the red. Crystals of lyrium peeked through the bone and flesh, needling through her body, growing along lines of power that ran through every mage’s body.

Vivienne knelt on the other side of Aurum with a soft cry, a hand folded over her heart, and the other reaching out to hold Aurum’s Anchor-touched hand. Madame de Fer rarely allowed such depth of emotions to touch her face, let alone her entire body, but she collapsed down next to Aurum, fine clothes torn, blooded and bruised. With as gentle a touch as she possessed, she reached out to cup Dorian’s cheek and pull him forward until their foreheads met.

“We will figure this out, Dorian. We’ll get her back,” Vivienne said quietly.

Her voice was firm, unyielding, but there was emotion in it, regardless of her measured tone. Dorian nodded, but did not try and move away from the contact. The two mages comforted each other in silence. Varric came up, as did Cole. Cassandra was kneeling, head bowed, both hands clasped on the hilt of her sword, her shield on her back again. Rylen stood next to her, arms crossed, his eyes closed.

Cole, hesitant, and looking for approval from Dorian and Vivienne, reached out to brush his fingers through her hair.

Dorian looked up to him, eyes wet with tears, kohl horribly smudged, and desperate hope taking form behind his eyes as he looked at the spirit-made-flesh. Cole had always had the skill of speaking beyond whatever blocks lived in someone, and maybe, just maybe, that meant that he could – he could change this, let them know what was happening, make something _different_ happen.

He had heard Cole talking to the Tranquil, few that there were in Skyhold, his voice low, and soothing. Dorian had never tried to properly eavesdrop on the conversations, profoundly uncomfortable with the idea of having the knowledge of what a spirit who could speak directly to, and comment on, one’s ineffable soul-stuff, would say about the Tranquil. Sometimes ignorance was better than the pain of knowing.

But now?

Now he had to know. He _had_ to know if Aurum was going to be alright. If she was going to get better.

“Please, Cole,” he said before he could even consider the magnitude of what it was that he was asking the spirit. “ _Please_.”

Cole looked up at Dorian through pale lashes, his soft blue eyes full of a sadness that stretched back eons.

“You won’t like it,” he said softly.

“Cole, _please_ , just tell us,” Vivienne implored, a surprising note from someone who had not trusted Cole to be within even arms reach of her.

Cole, even, looked surprised at Vivienne addressing him as she was. Slowly, his gaze turned to her, the wide brim of his hat casting shadows that made the spirit-flame reflected in the back of his eyes glow. Compassion flowed from him, but he restrained himself from reaching out and laying his hand on Vivienne. She did not like that.

“Aurum is gone. And not-gone. The seal hurts her, pulls her in. Like the Well did. It keeps her apart, and away. But she’s still _there_. I can almost talk to her, almost reach her, but when I get close, it’s like she fades away again. The others are trying to keep her safe now. She is angry. Furious. Scared. Sad. Desperate. But safe.”

“Others?” Dorian asked.

“Her mother had been with her since the beginning. I thought she knew. She didn’t. Her mother protected her, and bridged a gap between her and the Fade to let her pull magic before she was ready to. Her mother remained behind, a bridge that Aurum crossed freely, and at will, to drag power and presence through herself. She did the impossible because her mother had,” Cole said, looking down, the brim of his hat blocking Dorian and Vivienne’s view of his face.

The assassin was quiet for a long moment, his pale fingers tracing the scar down Aurum’s face, the same one her mother’s spirit had touched. Dorian and Vivienne shared a look across Aurum’s still body, trying to nonverbally communicate between each other. Should they push Cole for more, immediately, or just wait?

He solved their conundrum himself.

“The Well of Sorrows. It’s a pool of spirits, the Fade contained, constrained, localized. Elvhen knowledge, elvhen dreams, elvhen desperation, all of it. Rylen brought Aurum to the spirits. Her mother knew to ask, knew that there could be something there, if only she brought her there. Protection called to Protect. They…it…Them, all of them, as many and as One, are Protection. A Greater Spirit of Protection. They just want what’s best for…”

He trailed off, cocking his head off to the side, listening to something neither Vivienne nor Dorian would ever allow themselves to hear.

“They aren’t sure why they’re here. But they will protect. Protect…so much. They want to protect. That is all they want. All they will do. They were called for one thing, and one thing only. To protect. That is all they’ve wanted to do. The only thing they have ever wanted to do. The reasons they stayed, they found in her. Because of her.”

Dorian’s brows furrowed.

“What…do you mean?”

Cole huffed, and furrowed his brows. He took a moment to search for the words he wanted, ducking his head down and gently pressing his palm to Aurum’s cheek. He took a long moment to think about what he wanted to say.

“The Spirit, they and the one and only of them and all of them together, are there to Protect. That is what they are here for. The reason they came to Aurum, the reason Liluye could call them, was because they all wanted the same thing. All of them. And now they have Aurum and they are going to Protect her, but also others. Everything. What they need to protect.”

Dorian looked from Cole up to Vivienne, his eyes brimming with tears. He was not certain he understood what was happening. He wasn’t sure if he _wanted_ to understand what was happening. Because all of it sounded…wrong.

Bad.

“She’s possessed,” Dorian said, quietly, almost just to himself.

“Yes, but that’s not always a bad thing. She’s going to be fine. She will recover, she needs time. She needs time and care, but she will heal. She will come back from this. They want to protect her.”

Cole did not lift his gaze up from Aurum’s face. His hands carefully traced down her cheeks, following the lines that had once been tattooed into her flesh. Without the bow of Andruil in place across her cheeks, and all else, the only features of her face were the scars.

The knife-wound from her childhood , a lightning bolt through her brow, and down her cheek, healed and faded from the long time that had passed. Silvered and only just barely raised up on her skin, the scar sparked purple, ever so briefly, against Cole’s fingers. The last remaining residue of Liluye had been called and contained the same night.

Scars, faint and barely even able to be sensed by the careful hands that passed over her face, told stories and none of them were kind. She bled from the scar through her shoulder from a different Templar’s blade. The wear and tear of being the Inquisitor, this war, this whole fiasco, it was all patterned on her skin, a horrible reminder of every last moment of struggle she had suffered in her life.

Cole looked profoundly sad as he wiped away lyrium from her mouth and nose. The magic in the blue liquid did not seem to bother him, he just wiped his fingers clean on his boot and went back to taking care of Aurum.

She was still unmoving, her chest rising and falling slowly and steadily. If they could only ignore, or wipe away the wounds. The brand. The eerily calm way she slept, her body entirely relaxed and couldn’t be roused.

They just wanted Aurum back.

Dorian covered his face with both of his hands and sat down. His staff hit the ground next to him. He didn’t bother trying to pick it back up.

Tranquility.

Aurum was _Tranquil_.

His best friend, his sister, she was gone. She was gone, and it didn’t matter what Cole said. He – his day – everything  -  had gone so remarkably wrong that he didn’t even know what to say or do. His friend was gone. Tranquil.

It was a gnawing in his gut, a horrible, terrible feeling, a realization that she was alive, still breathing, still there, still present physically, but dead, all but dead and it didn’t matter. He didn’t know what to do about it. He didn’t know what he could do.

Everything Cole had said confused and hurt him. He wanted to believe that what Cole had said was true, that Aurum could be brought back, that whatever had happened in the Well to allow Spirits to enture her body was going to be good.

Speaking with her mother had been confusing and heart-wrenching enough. He wouldn’t be able to handle it if he truly lost her to possession. He had seen possessed mages before. Even if the spirits came to them kind, something in the mortal coil always cursed the Spirit. Mortals and those of the Fade were never meant to touch.

“Dorian, that isn’t true. You know that I have managed to touch the body. I’ve touched all of you, haven’t I?” Cole said softly.

“Cole you _have_ changed,” Dorian replied, tiredly. “You have changed so much from when we first found you. You have changed, and there’s…nothing that means that that won’t happen to the Spirit? Spirits? That are in her now. How are we supposed to trust what happens? Trust these Spirits? Trust what? What if she doesn’t come back, Cole? What do we do then?”

Dorian’s voice trailed off as the weight and enormity of the idea of truly losing Aurum settled in.

Tranquility was one thing. Mages had to be aware of the possibility, had to understand that at some other’s whim, they could be made Tranquil. In the Imperium, it was not so much a problem as it was in Ferelden, but it still could happen and it was still something horrible and concerning and terrifying.

It was only supposed to happen to the dangerous, uncontrollable mages.

Not to people like Aurum.

She was scary, yes. Powerful, in a terrifying way. She was stronger than so many other mages that it was honestly concerning. No one person should bear all that power, but Aurum wore the mantle of power with an ease and grace that made Dorian envious and simultaneously shy. Now, however, that was all gone. There was nothing left of the power, just a body with a pattern of wounds and a profoundly, wrongly peaceful look on her face.

He wanted his friend back.

She was his sister, his friend, she meant so much to him, she had done so much for him and now, now, he couldn’t do anything to help her.

That helplessness burned his chest just as much as the brand had burned hers.

Vivienne knelt next to Aurum, opposite Cole, and gently, carefully, adjusted her body so she was lying flat, her hands folded neatly on her stomach. There was little else to do. Varric had his eyes closed, trying to think of anything other than this end to the story. Someone would have to tell Curly and it was going to not be an easy conversation to have. He would do it because he was used to being the bearer of the worst news.

“We will have to get moving soon,” Rylen said softly from behind them all. “We don’t know if there are going to be more Templars, and if there is…I don’t know if waiting for her to wake up is the best course of action. We need to get her to healers. To someone who might now something more of what we can do for her.”

He didn’t approach any closer than he already was, it didn’t feel right, as a Templar, to intrude upon the mages mourning. Rylen had seen…the worst of Templars inducing Tranquility for nothing more than their own gain, or as punishments not for the Tranquil, but for those who cared for the mage who the Tranquil used to be.

Not everyone was kind. Tranquility was…necessary. To keep those too dangerous, too unstable, too _much_ from hurting so many other people. But this was not the same. This was not at all like what he had been told Tranquility should be.

What had been done to Aurum was a brutality.

What had been done to their Inquisitor was a part of war.

She was the leader, and destroying the leader would give the opposing army an invaluable advantage. Aurum was their leader, she was responsible for everything they did. They were fighters. This was war. She was a mage, and Tranquility was a way to control mages who you disagreed with.

Samson was a Templar. This was his justice. He had removed the threat of the Inquisitor, leaving the Inquisition without a leader for a moment. And what’s more, he had reminded all of the mages in the protection of the Inquisition that the Templars could still reach out and make them Tranquil as well.

Losing Aurum like _this_ , even if she wasn’t truly gone, even if there was a slim chance that she could come back, even if there was a slim chance for that sort of amazing miracle…she was still lost. They had still failed her.

“Rylen’s right. We need to get going. If Aurum needs to be carried, then we carry her. But we can’t stay here forever. We have to move. We have to, and once we get her to safety maybe we can sit and think about what we need or want, or what can be done. Right now, though, we should leave.”

Varric’s voice was soft, and soothing, trying to calm the tempers of others and himself. He didn’t want to think too hard about how much it hurt him to see Aurum laying like that, lyirum-burned and scarred. Unmoving.

He…had letters to write. Maybe Merril or Anders would know something more of how to fix this. Someone had to know. Someone he knew had to know _something_ to fix this. Fix her, fix this whole mess, just fix it. He wanted to tell a story at the end of all of this and right now, it was a fucking tragedy.

He didn’t write tragedies. He wrote pulp fiction, he wrote romantic schlock, he wrote things that made people _happy_. There was not an iota of happiness in this story. Not right now. Aurum had lost too much in her life, and had only just been getting to the point where she could truly _find_ happiness again. Now though it was all being torn away from her again.

If she was even still _there_ , and Varric couldn’t be certain she was.

She was Tranquil.

Rylen walked forward and knelt down next to Aurum. He reached forward and picked her up, gently cradling her body in his arms. Carrying her over his shoulders would undoubtedly be easier on him, and would exhaust him much less, but it felt impersonal and incorrect to do so.

Aurum did not even stir, her eyes still closed, her breathing still even and slow. She did not seem to be even the slightest modicum of aware of what was happening. Her body was limp, and hung from his arms, entirely boneless.

Vivienne carefully approached Rylen and rearranged Aurum in his arms. The Grand Enchanter did her best to protect Aurum from the jutting protruding points of his armor, carefully moving Aurum’s body so that she wouldn’t wake up with any other bruises from being carried as she was.

Not that some bruises would be the worst of her injuries when she woke up. There was the brand that was still seeping and cracking lyrium, not to mention the re-torn scar through her shoulder, and all the wounds that Dorian and Vivienne could not have healed.

She was still asleep. Unconscious. Unmoving.

They gathered together, Dorian leading, and Vivienne in the rear. Cole hovered near Rylen’s elbow, fading back towards Vivienne at odd intervals. Varric walked in front of Rylen.

It was a sad procession, but it was all they had.


	53. The Control

Dorian tried not to look back at Aurum as they walked through the Temple. He tried his best not to think every sound was her calling out to him, he did not want to think about her lying there in Rylen’s arms, unmoving and unaware. Because it scared him.

She was his sister, his best friend.  She deserved better, she had deserved better, she continued to deserve better, and now she was Tranquil.

His _best friend_ was Tranquil.

Dorian’s entire chest felt like Bull had crushed it with one of his massive war hammers. Almost afraid of what he would feel, he reached up and pressed his palm against his sternum, pushing hard. The metal of his belts pushed against the armor, and then against him until he could feel the impression of the metal dented into his skin.

He couldn’t even feel the pain of that. Everything in his chest already hurt _so much_ that the little bit extra didn’t even register. He could hardly breathe at all, but he had to keep moving forward. He had to push through. Aurum would have. She could have kept going. She would have mourned him and then stood up and burned the entire world down in his defense.

She would have never stopped looking for an answer as soon as they were clear from any further fighting.

She would have torn stars from the fabric of the sky, she would have razed everything to the ground, she would have let herself be consumed, she would have done _every fucking thing_ possible to get him back. To save him.

He owed her the same intensity.

Dorian could do much when he was roused to it. He was a _scholar_ , damn it. The Inquisition’s library might be frightfully dearth of anything good to read, the Inquisition itself had resources that reached far and wide. He could find the answer. He could. He would. And then there would never be another Tranquil ever again.

He was going to fix this. Permanently.

Aurum deserved that. She deserved so much more than that, but he could do this. He could try.

He would try.

For her.

The group was uncommonly silent as they walked. None of them wanted to break the silence that reigned through the group. The Temple itself seemed blessedly silent as well. The whole world seemed to be holding its breath, waiting, listening, observing.

Aurum didn’t wake up, or even stir or show signs of awareness. Her body was limp. Rylen would try and rouse her whenever they slowed enough for him to try it. Aurum just moved limply, jostled only by his movements, and not moving of her own choice.

No one wanted to talk.

Some of them feared that if they started talking, they’d just start screaming and never stop until Aurum finally woke up.

Cassandra’s hands were cold. She kept a hand on her sword’s pommel and had her shield clutched to her chest. Her heartbeat was slow, unbothered and painfully, painfully hard against her ribs. She didn’t know if she could call it nerves, or something else, but she was discomfited to the extreme. Aurum was brightly burning, passionate and mercurial and now all of that was gone.

She was lying boneless in a Templar’s arm, she had been possessed – was still possessed, if the spirit who had been in Aurum could be believed – and Tranquil.

Drawing breath was so hard for Cassandra. So very, very hard. Prayers started on her lips, and trickled out of her mouth to fall on the ground beneath her. They did not feel like they usually did, as she said them. She usually found comfort in the Chant, a soothing balm for whatever travesty had befallen her that day, week, month, year. She had had her faith tested before. One did not get to where she was in her life without her faith being brought to trial before.

This still felt different. This was Aurum. She had done nothing wrong, done nothing to deserve this. It was a tragedy of the highest order. Cassandra didn’t want to believe it. It was easy to rationalize that Samson had just lost his mind and that was why he had decided to do what he did to Aurum.

The thought did not soothe her as she had hoped it would. The rationalization would have normally made it feel better, made it easier, more palatable. This was why Seekers like her existed, to find people like Samson and destroy them.

But she had not destroyed Samson. Samson had destroyed some part of Aurum that she was afraid would never come back again. She had failed Aurum, failed the Inquisition, and worst of all, failed herself.

Her prayers did not soothe her. Not like they usually did. She needed something more of the Maker than just the vague hope that whatever had happened to Aurum could be undone.

Even if the prayers did not help as much as she had hoped, she prayed regardless. She believed and that mattered to her. She believed it could all be fixed. But with everything as raw as it was right then, the prayers did not feel as they usually did. She said them anyway. She had to say something.

No one in the Temple bothered them.

There were signs of fighting from battles they had not been in. Red lyrium shards in the approximate shape of what could have been one of those horrifically twisted archers, blood, and streaks where a body had been pulled away.

Their path was clear, however.

They walked, and walked, and walkclearly demarked paths. They were just ed, guided forward by surprisingly clear paths. Doors had been blocked off, but there was always a way forward. The first few times, there had been caution, awaiting an ambush or something else nefarious.

There had been nothing. No one.

So now, they kept walking, a sad procession throughout the Temple.

The Temple was still stunning, but the beauty seemed dulled now. The blood did nothing to help that assessment, but that was not the only reason it seemed less than it was. It was like the air had all been drained out of the world. The joy, all bound up in the brand that scarred Aurum’s chest, the vibrancy tarnished by the bright blue lyrium-laced blood that still dripped from her nose.

Everything seemed lesser because Aurum was hurt. There was no more banter, no exultations in battle, no high-adrenaline whooping, no breathless gasping of excitement from anyone. They hurt, parts of their armor torn, and their hearts shredded. It all hurt.

The huge golden doors that had allowed them access into the Temple were open before them. The sounds of battle from outside were muffled, muddied by the doors and distance. There was still fighting though, still another battle, still something else to do.

They drew together, grouping up before the main door, out of sight and still far from any fight that could spill through.

Rylen knelt down, lying Aurum down behind a felled pillar, in plush grasses untouched by boots. She still did not move. Dorian stood over her, hands still white-knuckled on his staff.

“What do we do? We can’t carry her and fight, and if we try and send a runner out for more help, we won’t be able to control who know or doesn’t know,” Vivienne said, in a rare admittance of uncertainty.

Varric looked back to the door, his mouth turning down.

“We need to get back to the main camp as fast as possible, with as few people seeing Aurum’s…state as possible. If we can avoid contact with people, we can make whatever story we need to make in order to keep this _secret_. As long as we keep as many people in the dark as to what’s going on, we can buy ourselves time to figure out how to fix it.”

Cole knelt next to Rylen, reaching out to gently put a hand on Aurum’s shoulder.

“Maybe they can help,” he said softly, his voice touched by wonder.

Dorian turned quickly, dread touching him. Were there more enemies? People who were going to finally come kill them?

His magic coiled around him like a snake, waiting to strike, watching for a target to strike out at them from the shadows. No one was hurting Aurum ever again. Not as long as he was still standing.

With his magic readied, he _felt_ when something shifted in Aurum. She gave a rattling, heavy gasp and then sat up quickly.

Ozone scented the air, and Dorian watched in horror and fascination, but honestly, mostly, abject horror, as Aurum turned towards him, and bright glowing purple light burst from her mouth and eyes. He had been learning from her, been trained in magic beyond anything he had learned in Tevinter, and seeing that still made him stumble backwards.

This was not like when Liluye burst forth and commanded Aurum’s body. No, this was clearly something so, _so_ much more.

Aurum took a deep breath, and with an unblinking gaze looked up to the group. Lyrium poured from her mouth and nose again, and the brand on her chest glowed weakly. Her expression was still blank, the expression of every Tranquil that any one of them had ever seen, but the lightning, the magic-made-real, the purple light that split and formed the Tree of Mythal across Aurum’s face…

“Oh, _Aurum_ ,” Dorian whispered.

* * *

   
 _Art by Deadwooddross.tumblr.com (seriously go check them out they're amazing)_  


* * *

“Not her. We… _I_ am another,” Aurum said, turning her gaze up to meet Dorian. “I am sorry. Aurum needs rest. She needs many things. But the binding is enough to hold her back for now.”

Dorian stared, tears springing up in the corners of his eyes. He knelt down and reached for the body of his friend. She reached back with a single hand, pressing her fingers to Dorian’s palm.

“What is happening?” he whispered. He was awestruck and terrified.

The laugh that broke through Aurum’s mouth was the sound of a dozen people laughing all at once, coming out of the same, singular mouth. It was disconcerting and spine-chilling.

“Something new, Tavinte. We are…I am _very_ pleased with this. Aurum may need something more, may need to give something more, but for now. We can…I can help you. We can, I can manage her body, keep the veneer of normalacy in place. We have not, I have not been able to walk the world in many thousands of years. We are, I am curious as to what new things have come to the world. Aurum has not told us, not told me much of what she has experienced. She believes we are, believes I am a demon. We are not, I am not such.”

Slowly, Aurum stood. The movements she made were halting, jerking, too fast at the joints, too slow at the extremities, and as she made it all the way to her feet, it seemed to be more and more obvious that something was not _right_ with how her body moved.

Unlike Liluye, who had piloted Aurum’s body seamlessly, going so far as to fight in Aurum’s body, these new…spirits did not seem so skilled at making her body move the way it needed to. She looked possessed. She rolled up to her full height, her spine bending at all sorts of odd angles. Her head lolled, as if she forgot the muscles in her neck, and then remembered them all at once.

She grinned. They grinned? Aurum’s body grinned toothily at the gathered people of her Inner Circle.

Varric grimaced, and hid his face in his hands. This was not what he had hoped for. Aurum was _obviously_ wrong. Anyone would be able to look at her and see how she was different, how it did not work the same way anymore. How she was not _Aurum_.

“This is not going to work. They’re going to know immediately. You aren’t…you don’t look anything like her. Not even a little bit.”

The grin got wider.

“We are not, I am not, her. We can, I can only do so much. Once we are, I am in the view of others we will, I will try and adapt as needed. You must understand that this is the first time we have been, I have been in a body in many, many years. The feeling of life is a renewed experience for us, for me.”

Vivienne looked away from the sight of Aurum standing, body loose at every joint, hips cocked and shoulders slumped. She looked drunk, or drugged, or otherwise incapacitated. Nothing at all like Aurum was usually. Even when Aurum had been intoxicated and loose in Skyhold there had always been a sort of regality to the Inquisitor, something that had set her apart from those who had been drunk around her.

This? This was just something utterly different.

“Do not look so distressed at us, at me, Grand Enchanter Vivienne. We are, I am a quick learner. It will not take us, not take me long to figure this out again. You forget we are, I am sharing a body with her. All of her memories, we can, I can read. All of her we know, I know, more intimately than she even knows yet. Just because she does not accept us, accept me into her more fully, does not mean that we do not, I do not understand what she needs of us, needs of me.”

No one looked comforted by that. Rylen had his face in both of his hands, and he was shaking ever so slightly. This was so far from being good.

“Can you promise Aurum will come back?” Cole asked quietly, standing next to Aurum, hands folded up underneath his chin.

“No,” said the ones in Aurum, turning their attention fully to Cole, blinking the light out of their eyes for a moment. “No, we cannot, I cannot promise that. She may never come back. This may be our, may be my body forever. If she does not accept us, accept me, we cannot, I cannot promise that she will be as she should be. This is a delicate circumstance she has found herself in. We cannot, I cannot promise anything about what will happen. We were, I was tired of sleeping in that Well. We wanted, I wanted to see the world as it is now. We will, I will do this regardless of what happens to her.”

Slowly, the spirits within Aurum rolled their shoulders and looked around to the group. The purple void in her eyes was deep and all encompassing. She smiled, and the expression looked sideways and broken. Too much teeth, not enough of the wrinkle around her eyes, with tension in her neck and shoulders that did not belong, and the smile only got wider as the reactions rippled through the group.

That was all the indication the spirits seemed willing to give that they had discomfited Aurum’s friends.

As she had when Liluye had been in charge of Aurum’s body, her chest rose and fell as if she were sleeping, giving no indication of the fact that she was awake and moving. The effect was horrifically disconcerting, giving Aurum an eerie, broken gait.

“This isn’t going to work. You’re _glowing_. The first Templar who sees you is going to kill yo-”

“Hush, oh hush. We are, I am more than capable of defending ourselves, defending myself, defending this body. No one will harm us, none will harm me, no one will touch Aurum’s body. It has been a long while since we were, since I was in command of a body like this. It will take us, take me a moment to reacquaint ourselves, myself, with the feeling of being in control. Spirits are ephemeral, and she is quite, quite, physical. It will take time. But not much.”

Almost as if trying to prove that point, she rolled her shoulders again, straightened up, and the purple light faded just a bit. The tree of Mythal slowly ebbed away, leaving pale red burns in their place that looked too similar to the tattoos she had once had across her face.

Dorian knew she had worn the bow of Andruil on her face. He knew that she had chosen Andruil, and Aurum had told him that she had chosen that mark for a good reason. That she had wanted to hunt those who would hurt her people, that she had chosen to take the mantle of protector, but specifically one that would pursue those that would harm her People.

An active role, a huge responsibility, one that promised her pain but the sweet one of keeping those she loved safe. It had been her pride.

Her tattoos to Fen’Harel had been a different sort of promise, one that promised that she would do anything for her People. Anything. Whatever they needed. She had made a promise and had worn it across not just her face, or neck, but over her entire body. She had made herself a weapon for her People. Vengeance if needed, pursuit otherwise, chaos when needed.

But Mythal…Mythal’s tree.

Completely wrong. It was all wrong. And it didn’t matter that the red lines faded as Aurum slowly, slowly…became herself.

Her stride slowly re-acclimated to what it should be. Dorian watched, shocked and terrified and hurt and confused as his friend came back. The swagger in her hips and shoulder, the self-assured tension in her back, the way her hands turned as she prepared for a fight. Without her stave, he couldn’t watch her reach for her preferred weapon, or analyze how that worked, but…

Tears came anew to his eyes as he watched his friend, his _sister_ , come back to life. She moved and acted the way she would have. Should have. The way she always did. If he did not know, if he did not miss the lack of _blue_ in her eyes when she turned to look at him, if he paid attention to the still-dripping blood that flickered blue at the edge of his vision.

If he ignored that he could believe it was Aurum.

If he ignored it, if he let himself be fooled, if he let everything, it was all good again. Aurum was alive, nothing bad had happened, she was not Tranquil, and everything, _everything_ had been just fine. Nothing had happened, nothing had gone wrong. They had entered the Temple and found Aurum resplendent and triumphant, then brought her back to the Inquisition.

He knew that wasn’t right.

They all knew it was not right.

All of them knew, but looking at Aurum, they couldn’t tell. The minutiae were flawless, perfect, utterly indistinguishable from the woman they _had_ known. Aurum pressed her hand to the door out of the Temple and turned to look over her shoulder at the group. There was even the echoing of the ring of blue that her eyes usually had. The smile on her lips was _hers_ , the devilish twist of her lips and that one little quirk of her brow, all Aurum.

“See, we told you – _I_ told you that I could do this. Now let us get back to your campsite. There is much of this world we have not seen in many years. The witch who came before, we did not take to. Aurum…Aurum came to us, burning brightly behind a cage of magic’s make. She wanted to protect you. We understood that. I understood that. I understand that. I want to see what it was that she so desperately wanted to protect.”

The purple light flickered for a moment, the Tree of Mythal warping the air over Aurum’s skin, and then it was gone, and the Inquisitor winked at her friends and companions before leaving the Temple.

Dorian’s stomach dropped. He didn’t want to think of what this was going to be like. How he would have to explain this to Leliana, Josephine… _Cullen_. Oh, how was he going to find the words to tell them what it was that had happened? How was he going to be able to even start talking about it?

Aurum was _Tranquil_.

And it didn’t matter that the Spirits could make them all forget it for a moment. Aurum was still Tranquil. There was still something missing.


End file.
